K-12 students’ misconception ability on global warming: a case study

Abstract

Abstract A case study is a research design to identify misconception about high school students on global warming. Diagnosing misconception process is important factor to help teachers overcome their learning problems. The participants are 100 students with 43 males and 57 females of the third grade students of senior high schools in Bandung. The data has been collected by distributing diagnostic test items in the form of three tier test. The study indicates that there are several misconceptions related to global warming such as (1) Global warming is caused by ozone layer depletion, (2) The greenhouse effect is not a natural but man-made phenomenon, (3) Carbon dioxide (CO2) which has been erode the ozone layer in the stratosphere, (4) Greenhouse gases increase due to the depletion of the ozone layer, and (5) The ozone layer is the layer involved in the process of the greenhouse effect. In conclusion, the results of this study established that the diagnostic test is able to analyse the students’ misconceptions as well as categorize the level of students understanding toward the global warming; understand the concepts, misconceptions, or don’t understand concepts.