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Asia-Pacific Forum
on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 9, Issue 2, Article 12
(Dec., 2008) |
Appendix–2: Conceptual Change Text
Some of the students’ misconceptions are:
Students draw oval shapes to illustrate the 'cell'.
Some students merely draw oval or round shapes to illustrate the 'cell'. However, the structure of the 'cell' has different shapes. For example, animal cell is oval/circular shape whilst plant cell is an angular one. A few students consider that nucleus is always in the center of the cell. However, this is wrong because nucleus is on the edge of plant cell due to size of vacuoles. Some students placed chloroplast to all plant cells. But this is not very common. The chloroplast, which is a kind of plastid, may not exist in the plant cell. Further, since plastids (chloroplast, leucoplast and chromoplast) are called in regard to its reflecting light spectrum, a transformation amongst them may occur. Some students view the pore as a gap in the cell wall. However, this is wrong because the pore is a constituent of the cell membrane and not available on the cell wall. Gaps on the cell wall afford the nutrition transition. A few students think that centrioles are not only responsible for cell division but also move the spindle fibers to poles of the cell. Although there is no centriole in the plant cell, the cell division appears in the plant cell. Therefore, the centrioles do not take for the cell division directly.
PLANT CELL
ANIMAL CELL
Figure 1. A transparent paper with plant and animal cell (Retrieved January 17, 2008 from http://www.biologycorner.com/bio1/cell.html )
Figure 2. Concept map (Retrieved January 17, 2008 from http://www.fed.cuhk.edu.hk/~johnson/misconceptions/concept_map/cellstr.html)
