Biology teacher candidates' alternative conceptions about the human respiration and source of metabolic energy

The researches have been shown that students acquire a large majority of misconceptions before and during school years. It has been claimed that these are usually developed by students to explain their physiological and biological surroundings. Moreover the development of misconceptions usually involves logical thinking in alternative beliefs system and can interfere with learning. For this, purpose of this study was identifying students' misconceptions about respiration and source of metabolic energy. If any misconception detected how a learning method could be applied in order to improve their learning skills. In order to detect the students' misconception about breath in this study a questionnaire was constructed based on literature. Totally six open-ended questions have been designated to test students' conceptions about respiration and source of alive metabolic energy. This questionnaire has been applied to 3 rd class biology teacher candidates. The results are shown that students have conflicting, and often incorrect ideas about respiration and the source of energy usage in metabolism. It has been shown that students' initial ideas about respiration and the source of energy used in metabolism are deep-rooted and difficult to change. © Sila Science. All rights reserved.