Annisa Fadillah, Das Salirawati
Chemical bonding is among the material required to be taught to tenth grade senior high school students. This topic also is directly related to other concepts concerning chemicals, such as the shape of molecules and chemical reactions that are associated with the forming or breaking of bonds in a chemical reaction. Unfortunately, chemical bonding is an abstract concept for learners to grasp and this can lead to misconceptions. Errors in understanding this concept can interfere with the learning of other interrelated concepts, so these misconceptions need to be detected in order to derive a solution. This research analyzed the percentage of learners with misconceptions of chemical bonding using a two-tier test totaling three questions. In all, 180 students participated in this study, divided into different school levels (high, medium, low) based on national test scores for chemistry in 2016. The students who participated in this study were recruited using stratified random sampling. More than 50% of learners experienced misconceptions. The level of students' conceptual understanding of chemical bonding shows a common failure in many aspects of chemistry teaching. The highest percentage of students with misconceptions was attending the high-level school. Such misconceptions are due to the failure of many aspects, not only the teaching. Therefore, we need to try to find a solution to reduce misconceptions. © 2018 Author(s).
Chemistry Education Master Program, Graduate School, State University of Yogyakarta, Yogyakarta, Indonesia; Department of Chemistry Education, Faculty of Mathematics, Natural Science State University of Yogyakarta, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
