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Students’ representations
of the cell concept from 6 to 11 grades: Persistence of the
“fried-egg model”
Nurettin Yorek, Mehmet Sahın and Ilker Ugulu*
Buca
Faculty of Education, Dokuz Eylul University, 35160, Buca,
Izmir–Turkey.
*Corresponding author. E–mail:
ilkerugulu@mynet.com.
Accepted
25 November, 2009. |
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This
study aimed to display the level of students’ conceptual
understanding of the cell concept. The study attempted to
explore how students had conceptually constructed the
general shape of the cell, the organelles and their
positions within a cell and the definition of the cell and
then compared grade 6, 9 and 11 students’ representations of
the cell concept. A conceptual understanding test was
developed and used as data collection instrument by the
researchers. Results showed that students tended to prefer
animal cells rather than plant cells in their drawings. The
proportion of students who drew animal cells was observed to
increase from grade 6 to 11. Regarding students’ drawings of
organelles and their positions within the cell, students had
a firm grasp of the place of the nucleus, but the positions
of the cell membrane and the cell wall were mixed. A lack of
congruity in students’ representations of other organelles
led us to believe that students merely memorize the names of
the organelles and place them randomly somewhere between the
nucleus and the cell membrane. Students perceived the
nucleus, mitochondrium and ribosome as the most important
organelles in a cell.
Key
words:
Cell concept, student drawings, fried-egg model, primary
school, secondary school. |
