An exploratory study examining 10th-grade students’ conceptions about mountain building and relief

Abstract

Mountain building is a subject that has not been thoroughly explored in relation to misconception research. However, mountain building is complex, involving not only endogenous processes, but also exogenous ones. The main objective of this contribution is to determine, from a holistic standpoint, the misconceptions that students hold concerning mountain building. We have designed and used a questionnaire posing three kinds of questions to students related to their: geological knowledge, emotional issues, and academic background. The main benefit offered by the present research is the identification of misconceptions not covered in the literature available. We have found that the most common misconception is that the mountains occurs only at the edge of convergent lithospheric plates and is less frequent at divergent edges. Some students related the edge of the plates to areas under the sea or on the coast.