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Asia-Pacific Forum
on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 12, Issue 2, Article 8 (Dec., 2011) |
Science program in secondary schools has been altered in a manner that internalizes constructivist perspectives of learning and teaching, in 2007. The main purpose of the relatively newborn science program is to educate scientifically literate individuals who can “use scientific terms for explanations of natural events and interpret results based on evidences by questioning and thinking profoundly” (OECD, 2003, p. 133) and to raise individuals who can develop positive attitudes and even behaviors to environment (Ministry of National Education, 2007). In order to achieve declared purposes, all dimensions of the educational program has undergone dramatic changes. In other words, objectives, contents, teaching-learning situations (e.g. teaching methods, techniques, and strategies), and measurement-evaluation processes were designed on the basis of constructivist approach.
Chemistry, one of the science majors at secondary education, is common for all students enrolling ninth grade and concepts that need to be mastered are as follows; compounds, chemical changes, mixtures and solutions. Students select their major field at the end of ninth grade and then specialize towards their fields for three more years (that is, the duration of high school is 4 years in Turkey). Students who chose science field as their major field are responsible from various additional chemistry concepts which are introduced here, respectively; the particulate nature of matter; periodic system; phase changes; mixtures and solutions at tenth grade; chemical reactions; chemical equilibrium; electrochemistry; nucleus chemistry at eleventh grade; and organic chemistry at twelfth grade. After high school, students have to enter “Student Selection Examination (ÖSS)” based on their major fields if they desire to specialize on a vocation. The duration of education in universities alters according to the selected vocation and university.
To sum up, according to the revised science education program, students at eleventh grade are familiar with the following chemistry concepts; the particulate nature of matter; properties of atoms; chemical bonding; gases; liquids and solutions; conservation of mass and atoms; symbols, equations, and stoichiometry; chemical reactions; heat and temperature; phase changes; and macroscopic versus atomic and molecular properties.
The sample of the study consisted of 88 eleventh grade (16 to 17 years old) students from two different public high schools in the city of Isparta, Turkey. The selected schools have good opportunities in terms of infrastructure that is, both of the schools have science laboratories, audio-visual equipments, small class size, and etc. Among the sampled individuals, 54 of them were females and the remaining 34 of them were males. The last semester chemistry course grades of students were ranging from 2 to 5, and the mean of grades was 4,2 out of 5,0.
Instrument and Data Collection Process
As mentioned above, this study aims to evaluate eleventh grade students’ conceptual understanding of general chemistry concepts, that is, whether students accomplish to learn meaningfully and conceptually. The stated purpose is analogous to the objectives of the Chemistry Concepts Inventory (CCI), developed originally by Mulford and Robinson (2002), that is why CCI was administered for collecting data in this study. Furthermore, the CCI assures information about various general chemistry concepts, that is; enables to figure out the whole picture as stated previously in the introduction section.
CCI was developed “to measure the extent of entering students’ alternate conceptions on topics found in the first semester of many traditional general chemistry courses” (p. 739). The original version of the CCI includes 22 non-mathematical questions and not only questions but also distracters were based on common alternate conceptions on general chemistry concepts. The concepts which covered by CCI are as follows; the particulate nature of matter; properties of atoms; chemical bonding; gases; liquids and solutions; conservation of mass and atoms; symbols, equations, and stoichiometry; chemical reactions; heat and temperature; phase changes; and macroscopic versus atomic and molecular properties (See sample items in the Results section). Six of the twenty two questions are paired questions which ask a question and continue with the reason of that question (Table I).
Table I: Nature of items included in the original version of the CCI
Non-paired Items
Paired Items
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 14, 15, 22
7-8, 10-11, 12-13, 16-17, 18-19, 20-21
The original version of the CCI was administered to eighteen chemistry graduate students in order to take feedback for clarity and length and to four experienced chemistry education researchers to control level and content. In addition to validity evidences, the authors checked for reliability after conducting the inventory as a pretest and posttest to final 928 freshmen students enrolling science and engineering majors. Average scores of these students were “10.3 on the pretest with a Cronbach α of .704 and 11.2 on the posttest with a Cronbach α of .716” (Mulford & Robinson, 2002, p. 740). These values were accepted as satisfactory (Fraenkel & Wallen, 2006) for deducing that students did not respond questions randomly. The CCI was adapted to Turkish context by Boz and Uzuntiryaki (2005). One of the questions in the original inventory was omitted in the translated version because students found that item difficult to understand. The revised version of CCI was administered to one hundred sixty five pre-service elementary science and chemistry teachers. Cronbach α internal consistency coefficient was found as .70 (Boz & Uzuntiryaki, 2005).
As in the translated version, in the present study, twenty one item-CCI was administered to the sampled individuals in the spring term of 2010-2011. The students were requested to complete the test in 30 min. as offered in the original study (Mulford & Robinson, 2002). The sample was encouraged to perform their best by announcing that they are valuable for a scientific research and assuring confidentiality for their answers.
