Yusmina Hala, U.A. Syahdan, Halifah Pagarra, S. Saenab
This study aims (i) to assess the level of understanding and misconceptions of Biology teachers in Makassar regarding cell concepts, (ii) to identify the Basic Competence in which the teachers pose misconceptions, and (iii) to identify the factors cause misconceptions on cell concepts among biology teachers in Makassar. The study is a descriptive study which implements Certainty of Response Index (CRI) as the method to identify teachers' misconception. Participants of the study (n=22) were selected through purposive sampling based on the representativeness of the school in Makassar area. The result of data analysis showed that there were teachers who possess misconceptions (40.30%), scientifically accepted conceptions (49.10%), and transitional conceptions (10.77%). The misconceptions were found in 6 Basic competences of the cell concepts. The highest misconceptions (55.68%) was found on Basic Competence 3.2. which require participants to distinguish transport mechanism on the (diffusion, osmosis, active transport, endocytosis, and exocytosis) based on observation. There were several factors which cause the occurrence of misconceptions among the participants in this study, including low level of reasoning ability, low retention of knowledge obtained in undergraduate, lack of learning resources, incomprehensible terms, and low interest of Biology teachers on cell concepts. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.
Department of Biology, Universitas Negeri Makassar, Makassar, 90222, Indonesia; Department of Biology, Graduate School, Universitas Negeri Makassar, Makassar, 90222, Indonesia; Department of Science Education, Universitas Negeri Makassar, Makassar, 90222, Indonesia
