An Investigation of Elementary School Teachers학 Conceptions on Buoyancy

부력 개념에 관한 초등학교 교사들의 이해도 조사

Elementary school teachers' understandings about buoyancy were investigated through the questionnaire method. The questionnaire was composed of 4 questions on hydraulic pressure and 8 questions on buoyancy. The questions on buoyancy asked about the correlation of buoyancy with following basic concepts, density of liquid, volume of submerged object and so forth. 295 teachers on the 22 elementary schools in Busan, Yangsan and Gimhae were selected through random sampling method. The results of this study were summarized as follows: On the correlation of the magnitude and direction of hydraulic pressure with the depth of water, a large portion of the respondents had a scientific conception. But on the correlation of hydraulic pressure with density, the relatively small portion of them appeared to have a scientific conception. The respondents, on the whole, had a scientific conception about the correlation of buoyancy with density of liquid. But they seemed to have naive conceptions about the correlation of buoyancy with the volume of a submerged object and with the depth of water, the amount of water in container and the reduced amount of water by the object from container. We found that the respondents were context dependent and tended to search for solutions for the questions of buoyancy using the concept of pressure in the water. From above results, we suggested that in the would-be revised elementary science text book, the contents of pressure in the water should be introduced after the concept of weight in the water was gained.