Student Research Misconduct in Elementary School about Science: A Case Study of the Experiment on ‘Pendulum Movement’

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to clarify the research misconduct of children in elementary school science experiments and its causes. We observed and recorded a lesson on “pendulum movement” and created a speech protocol. We classified the research misconduct that occurred in four situations: deriving results, recording results, processing results, and reporting results, and analyzed the causes of the research misconduct. Our results revealed many cases of unrecorded results in “recording results”, as well as many cases of inappropriate processing of data in “processing results”. These findings indicate that there is indeed research misconduct in elementary school science experiments that is likely to occur in each situation. The results further showed that the research misconducts were caused by two factors: the characteristics of the experiment, such as the difficulty of the measurements, and the thoughts and feelings of the group members, such as their discomfort with the results and their regard and consideration for the teacher.