Abstract:

The thinking of individuals and their related problems can always be considered as an actual problem in the process of acquiring knowledge.

This problem appears even more intensively when learning natural science content, since in these themes, in addition to creating meaning and interpreting concepts and phenomena, students need to coordinate higher-ordered thinking operations, i.e. to think complexly.

In this paper, we would like to present a theoretical study that summarizes how and in what approach the researchers of the current pedagogical science community interpret and explain the wrong or different pupils' concepts that occur during the formation of knowledge.

The paper provides information on a review of studies analyzing misconceptions, while our attention was directed to pedagogical research methods used to reveal and investigate misconceptions or alternative ideas, as well as to monitor the extent to which formative assessment techniques appear in research as tools of pedagogical diagnostic research methods.

The study aims to provide researchers and practising teachers with a comprehensive picture of the tools of the most common research methods in research practice, encouraging them to have a greater degree of professional participation in the exploration of misconceptions, and at the same time, it is expected that the study will help to decide which is the best tool it can be used to reveal pupils' misconceptions and their thinking about science content.

Keywords:

Misconceptions, naive perceptions, alternative conceptions, diagnostic methods, assessment tools.