COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF 4MAT TEACHING METHOD IN REMOVING PUPILS’ PHYSICS MISCONCEPTIONS OF ELECTRICITY

The purpose of this study is to determine pupils' misconceptions about the electricity and the effects of 4MAT teaching method on these misconceptions. For this purpose, a non-equivalent pretest-posttest control group design was adopted and a three tier test with a sample of 100 ninth grade pupils was used to detect pupils' misconceptions about the electricity. The analysis of the data showed that pupils have the following misconceptions; local reasoning, attenuation model, empirical rule model, shared current model, current-potential difference confusion, short circuit misconception, current flow as water flow, power supply as a constant current source model and sequential reasoning etc. It was determined that the frequency of most of the misconceptions decreased after the application of the innovation. A greater fall was observed in the experimental group which suggests that the 4MAT teaching method was more effective than the traditional method in reducing misconceptions. Based on the results of this study, investigation of the effects of 4MAT teaching method on other complicated subjects of physics such as magnetism, regular circular momentum is suggested for further studies.