The Characteristics of "States of Matter" Concept Attributes of 3rd to 6th Grade Elementary School Students

This study analyzed the attributes of the conceptions of 3rd to 6th grade elementary school students on three states of matter and investigated the characteristics of the classified results of various examples of matter by grades. Through discussion activities, we confirmed the stabilization of conception attributions. For this study, 113 participants from two 3rd to 6th grade elementary school classes were selected. The concentration analysis (C-factor) and normalized gain (G-factor) of the conceptions for the quantitative analysis of the conception changes were used. The elementary school students retained different percentages of the attributes for states of matter. The characteristic of the grades were different between the 3rd grade and other grades. Based on these results, we pointed out the problems with the present teaching methods in science textbooks and stated the advantages of the effects of the representation of mixtures.