Children come into schools with their own conceptions about the world. Some conceptions are correct and some are incorrect. Incorrect conceptions are named preconceptions. Preconceptions are created by all the influences and experiences which shape a child in preschool age (Marin, Bennaroch 1994). Many things play an important role in the preconceptions’ creation, for example social, economic, and religious factors. This group is called exogenous factors. Also, we know of endogenous factors, which come from the individual psychological and biological characteristics of each individual. Misconceptions are created by misunderstanding or wrong understanding of a curriculum. These things happen, when a pupil is creating with a new curriculum the symbiosis. Part of knowledge from a new curriculum is understood right, part is connected with a previous preconception and part of pupil’s knowledge remains without change. This last part is impeding future learning. In the Slovakia is a few research works about misconception in the field of biology. There are some works, for example about pupils understanding of mammals (Kubiatko, Prokop 2007), some works were more specific – about human body, about photosynthesis and some were out of biology, about pupils perceptions of cartography. More works are in foreign countries, where this problematic has a history. Some articles are about some specific topics - photosynthesis, diffusion, homeostasis, etc. (Simpson, Marek 1988). Photosynthesis is a topic, which belongs to very favorite among researchers. Some articles are about pupils understanding of zoology, for example investigation of insects, birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles (Barrow 2002; Prokop, Kubiatko, Fančovičová 2007; Yen, Yao, Chiu 2004). In many articles are connected an investigation of knowledge with investigation of attitudes of pupils. The main aim of our investigation is find out ideas of Slovakian pupils about birds. From this main aim were specified particular aims, when we were focused on finding differences in ideas about birds between gender, residence and among age of respondents. Our research questions were followed: 1. Will be more successful in responses pupils, who learnt about birds at school on comparison with these pupils, who not? 2. Are there any differences in knowledge about birds between genders? 3. Have the residence of respondents got an influence on their knowledge about birds? The purpose of study was to find out the biggest problems of elementary school pupils about birds and particularly to fill a gap, which is in research literature about misconceptions in biology.

The measurement tool consists of 30 open-ended and multiple choice items. In open-ended items we expected one word answer or short sentences. Every multiple-choice question did not have the same number of possibilities. The number of possibilities was from two till five. Only one possibility was correct. Before administration of the questionnaire, it was checked by experts in zoology and biology teachers. The answers were coded binary. Incorrect answers were marked by number 0 and correct answers by number 1. The time for filling questionnaire was no longer than 30 minutes. The full version of the questionnaire can be provided by the authors on demand. We obtained 719 completely filled questionnaires from pupils of seven typical elementary schools in Slovakia. All grades were included in the investigation. The number of boys (n = 338) and number of girls (n = 371) was similar.

Questions in the questionnaire were divided in the five categories namely: 1. Identification of birds; 2. Reproduction of birds; 3. Food of birds; 4. Birds senses; 5. Migratory of birds. On the measure of reliability of the questionnaire, Cronbach’s alpha calculation was used. The value of Cronbach’s alpha was α = 0.55. This value indicates that the questionnaire is marginally reaching an appropriate reliability. The highest average score was found for the category “Reproduction of birds”. Only in this category was found percentage success higher than 60 %. The lowest score achieved a dimension “Food of birds”, where was percentage success lower than 25 % and the score was small in the category Birds senses, where was found percentage success higher only than 30 %. We believe that our study gives new information about misconceptions’ investigation and will help pedagogical workers in the teaching process.