SSP6024

Probing Understanding In Science

Semester 1, Session 2017/2018

PROJECT REFLECTION

LECTURER’S NAME:
PROF DR. SAADIAH BINTI BAHAROM

PREPARED BY:
MAIZATUL SARAH BINTI YAHAYA M 20161000600
 Probing students understanding towards science concept would never be easy. Some
students may have false prior knowledge , some may only lacking in kniwledge whilst other
might have correct prior knowledge but cannot correlate the knowledge into the real-life
situation. But mostly, in science, what we are afraid of is misconception among the science
students. We were assigned predict-observe-explain (POE) strategy as the a way to overcome
misconception among students in physics. At first, i thought POE can be used for all topics in
physic. But, eventually in some topic POE can only be used in a small part of the lesson. So, to
start the studies i and my coursemate have to search for the suitable topic to be used to carry out
this study. After series of discussion, we come out with free-fall motion topic which is actually
an event that occur almost everyday in ourlife but actually the students are having misconception
about it. In early stage of the studies, we just find the some information from previous studies
about what were the miconception occured in free fall. Then, we started to plan for the project
instrument which we want to used in the studies. In this stage, i think its was a challenge for me ,
as i, myself are having the misconception about the freefall. Thanks to my coursemate, they gave
a big help to me to overcome my misconception. To develop the POE worksheet, is not easy as it
seems. Eventhough this POE subject have many resources on the internet, we have to discuss
together to come out with suitable worksheet that meet the physics syllabus in Malaysia’s
secondary school. So, at the end we has succeed to construct the worksheet. For detecting the
students miconception in this topic, our group mate zainal sugest to use Force Concept Inventory
(FCI) that include Certainty of Response Index (CRI) for pre-test and post test instrument to
indicate their misconception which i think is good as the validity and reliability of the instrument
is highly proven in previous studies by researchers. Planning the activity in the studies, we
implement the constructivism approach by providing discrepant event to make the students
experience the situation by predicting,observing and explaining the situation based on the
activity. Only then, the conceptual change will take place as the would see what actually happen
and relating it into the richer context. At the end of the project, the outcome we’ve got is there
were a quite number of students improving in the post test question compared to pre test
question. By doing this project, actually i found that there were several strategies that could be
used to probe students understanding in science. As in physics, there are many abstract concept
that need meaningful learning in order for the students to overcome their misconception and also
improving their difficulties in some concept in phyics. At the end of this project, i do find that
POE is one of the best approach that can be use to probe understanding in science. The students
are very active. They can make hypothesis themselves and the they observe what happen and
actually they may voice out the opinion regarding their observation. Students can construct their
own knowledge and this process are very beneficial in order to enhance their learning skills. As
one of the project comittee, i find this project does help me to improve my view in how to probe
students understanding ins science subject a future. I’ve never had an experience to see how
teachers conducting , preparing POE-based learning in physics classroom before. But through
this project, i learnt that preparing the classroom is not easy. It required a lot of work.I am really
amazed by the students response. The students actually are very attentive to concept that were
taught and they are really engaged with the activity that were plan by us. I really happy when i
see they were improve and gives me positive feedback through this study.

Overall, in future studies, POE should be used as an effective startegy to probe

understanding in science. But , I would suggest integration of POE with other teaching strategy
to make the learning session becomes more meaningful. Thus, by integrating POE with
interview,concept map or drawing, the conceptual change can be easily occured as the correct
concept were affirmatively support by concrete evidence from various dimension.