Visual Thought Patterns of Biology Students Towards The Abstract Concept of Osmosisi (82 - 92)

Abstract

This study is aimed at exploring the visual thinking of Biology students on the abstract concept of osmosis. One of the objectives of this study is to identify the students’ visual thinking when they see and read the abstract concept given. A purposive stratified random sampling was used to select 15 respondents from two secondary schools. The respondents were categorized into two groups, the high achievers and the low achieversbased on their previous science and biology examination results. The instruments used in this study were a task on the concept of osmosis, semi-structured interview and the researcher’s audit trail. The data was analysed quantitatively using percentages and qualitatively by developing categories of information using the constant comparative method of data analysis. The main findings of this research showed that high achievers were prone to have an ‘overview’ visual thinking as compared to their counterparts, the low achievers who showed a ‘zooming image’ in their visual thinking. Eighty percent (80%) of the low achievers are said to be active thinkers during the process of conceptualizing the abstract concept of osmosis as they were able to deliver colour perception in their thinking. The students also used filtering, relating, history and dimension as the elements of thinking during information processing to generate their ideas. In conclusion, the study shows that the students used key words to guide them to generate ideas for the definition of the abstract concept of osmosis. It is hope that this finding will assist educators to enhance the low achievers’ performance of their learning of an abstract science concept