ANALYSIS OF MENTAL MODELS OF JUNIOR-HIGH- SCHOOL STUDENTS ON LEARNINGTHE PROCESS OF HEATING USING ELECTRICITY

This study intended a research on the types of naive mental models jun ior high school students used in order to understand electric heating, and also to research the possibility that their models might change f rom unscientific models to scientific models after scientific experime nts performed by students. We found 11 types of naive models, which co uld be divided into two categories : ''scientific models'', and ''unsc ientific models''. The majority of the subjects showed ''scientific mo dels'' at the time of the study. After the experiment, many subjects h aving unscientific models as their naive models, changed to scientific models while those who had scientific models in the beginning support ed models with increasingly scientific sophistication. On the ether ha nd, it was proved that one of the naive models could not be easily cha nged by the experiment. The above research showed that the experiment proved generally effective in changing student's naive mental models t o more scientific ones.