Abstract
The Purpose of this study is to investigate when students have a misconception of the traffic flow model for electric current in parallel and series circuit and whether formal instruction in science class will bring about changes of the model or not. For this purpose we conducted research on electric current from elementary school sixth graders to second year university students. The following results were obtained. 1) The number of students who used the traffic model increased by grade. The number of subjects showed especially sharp increases in eighth and ninth graders. Consequently, we found that approximately 80% of second year university students used the traffic flow model. 2) Less than 5% students used a scientific model and could understand the link between declarative knowledge of electric current and the image of a parallel and series circuit. Therefore, science class did not modify students' misconception. 3) Although students expanded their knowledge on circuit after the ninth grade, we found that their knowledge of electric current has no link to the correct image of electric current.
