Abstract:
The purpose of this study is to explore students and teachers' misconceptions on heat and
temperature. The study administered in six secondary schools from six Woredas (Moyale,
Dire, Yabello, Dillo, Miyo and Dubulk) of Borena Zone in Oromia regional state from which
60 grade 12th natural science students randomly selected and 60 physics teachers
purposively selected participated. To come up with this, twenty structured questionnaires and
interviews were prepared and data collected from the participants. Mean, standard deviation,
frequency and percentage were used to analyze the quantitative data and the qualitative data
analyzed thematically. Subsequently, these used to analyze the data by SPSS. The results of
the study indicate that most of the students involved in the study are overwhelmed with
misconceptions about heat and temperature. Specifically, about 76.99% of students and
69.67% of teachers were overwhelmed with misconceptions about the heat whereas 70.8% of
students and 51.4% teachers of participated in temperature. The result of the study showed
that the students and teachers expressed misconceptions, which challenges and obstacles in
learning and teaching process. The school administrators and stakeholders need to prepare
training for physics and science teachers focusing on what is a misconception and how we
can manage it in a class to help students.
