THE EFFECT OF CONCEPTUAL CHANGE APPROACH TO ELİMİNATE NINETH GRADE HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT HUMUDITY

The aim of this study is to determine the effectiveness of teaching based on conceptual change overcome misconceptions of 9th grade high school students about the subject of humidity. The sampling of the study was formed with two classes of 9th grade students from a general high school in the city-center of Trabzon. A quasi-experimental method was used in the study as a research design. One of the classes that was selected for the study was chosen as a controlgroup (n=45), and the other class was chosen as an experiment group (n=45). Conceptualchange texts and concept maps were used to teach humidity subject to the experiment group. Incontrary, traditional teaching methods were used to teach the same subject to the control group.For the purpose of collecting data, Concept Test (CT) was implemented, and also interviewswith teachers and classroom observation were utilized. The control and experiment groups’pre-test and post-test scores were analyzed by t test. Analysis of the data showed that there wasnot a statistically significant difference between the control and the experiment group in thepre-test in terms of the concept understanding achievement. However, post-test results showedthat there was a significant difference in favor of the experiment group. It was concludedthat teaching methods and materials based on conceptual change were more effective thantraditional teaching methods to teach humidity subject.