A Study on Overcoming Misconceptions of 6th Graders About Equations

The aim of this study is to determine and overcome misconceptions of 6 th graders about first degree equations with one unknown. The study has a mixed research design and was conducted with 25 sixth graders in a public school during the spring semester of the 2011-2012 academic year. Data were collected through a test of 20 open-ended items developed by the researcher. The misconceptions were detected through descriptive analysis of the test. Then, students were being taught based on activity-based instructional methods for eight hours. The test was also given at the end of the instruction as a post-test to examine the effectiveness of the activity-based instruction with overcoming their misconceptions. Data were analyzed by paired samples t test through SPSS 16.0. Findings indicated that activity-based instruction was effective in overcoming students' misconceptions.