Students? ideas about scientific concepts: ?meanings of words? in the children?s language?

Eirini Spyratou, Anna Varsamou, Vasilis Tselfes
Faculty of Early Childhood Education, University of Athens, eirinispyratou@yahoo.com
"Didaskalio" of Early Childhood Education, University of Athens, indieann@gmail.com
Faculty of Early Childhood Education, University of Athens, tselfesv@ecd.uoa.gr

In this paper we test the hypothesis that, what is considered as students' ideas about scientific conceptions, is nothing more than "meanings" that the everyday, children-used language, credits on the actual (spoken by researchers) "words", which the students listen and respond to during the research. For our purpose we use the elaborated data of a science education research questionnaire, which was answered by Greek students. This questionnaire was constructed, distributed, elaborated and finally published by well-known Cognitive Science researchers, who inquired the unfolding of the students' ideas about one of the most "popular" science education research' concepts: the concept of Force. For our analysis we use the meanings for the word "force" as they are presented in an eminent Greek dictionary (presented by descriptions and examples). The results confirm our hypothesis. The confirmation of this hypothesis drives us to express our doubts about the effectiveness of a teaching practice aiming students' alternative conceptions and in the same time based on their everyday language and the unavoidably bind together culture.