Misconception Types Analysis onMechanism of Evolution

Students' conception about the mechanism of evolution is closely related to knowledge gained from the learning environment, and from the environment outside of school which sometimes is not based on scientific knowledge and understanding. Therefore it is necessary to investigate their prior knowledge and to analyze the level of misconception, as well as the type of misconception experienced by students so that the appropriate steps can be determined to overcome them. This qualitative descriptive study was conducted to get a clear picture of student misconception on learning material of evolution mechanism and the type of misconception. A number of students from a university in Bandung, West Java Indonesia was involved as participants (N = 30). The instrument used consisted of 20 questions in the form of three tiers Diagnostic Question Cluster (DQC) assessment. Results of research based on DQC instruments at level 1 and level 2 indicate that the highest misconception is the concept about the nature of evolution. The result also shows the types of misconceptions occured, Namely common-sense misconception (CsM), content-based misconception (CbM), nature of science-based misconception (NbM), non-scientific misconception (NsM), vernacular misconception (VcM). The highest type of misconception is CbM(36.44%), while the lowest type of misconception is VcM (11.34%).