2022 Volume 63 Issue 1 Pages 179-188
This study conducted a questionnaire survey from 2013 to 2018 with the aim of clarifying the process of forming naïve concepts, and of reconceptualizing them. 319 science undergraduate students at a national university participated in the study. The analysis of the 434 naïve concepts described by the 319 respondents revealed the following six points: (1) Naïve concepts tended to form in elementary school for both boys and girls. (2) The girls were more likely to form naïve concepts at a younger age than the boys. (3) The boys were more likely to form naïve concepts in the field of physics and less likely to form them in the field of biology, while the girls were less likely to form naïve concepts in the field of physics and more likely to form them in the field of biology. (4) A comparison of the causes of the formation of naïve concepts by field demonstrated that in the fields of physics, chemistry, and biology, concept formation was based on actual experience and childhood logic, understanding based on intuition, abstraction or invisibility, and others’ advice, respectively. In the field of geology, the bases were cartoons and movies. (5) The causes of the formation of naïve concepts were independent of sex and developmental stage. (6) A comparison of the methods of reconstructing naïve concepts by discipline revealed that mathematical proofs were relatively more common in physics, while correlation with actual experiences through experiments at school was more common in chemistry, actual experiences through experiments at school and as well as social networks and TV programs in biology, and, finally, developmental understanding in geology.
