Teachers’ understanding of the particulate nature of matter: The case of Zambian pre-service science teachers

Sample

A sample of this study consisted of 30 Junior high school pre-service science teachers at a teachers training college in Zambia. There were 15 female and 15 male pre-service science teachers. All the participants were training to teach general science, composed of physics, chemistry, earth science and biology concepts and skills, at Junior high school level, from grades eight to nine. All the participants had taken physics, biology, and chemistry subjects for three years at high school (i.e. grades 10-12) before entry into the teacher education program. These three science courses are mandatory in Zambian high schools. Participants were in the first year of the three-year teacher education program. The teacher education program requires the pre-service teachers to take content courses in biology, physics and chemistry. In addition to these content courses, pre-service teachers take science teaching methods, educational psychology, sociology of education, and history and philosophy of education courses. Pre-service teachers do their teaching practice (student teaching) in public schools twice in three years of the teacher education training program. The first teaching practice is done in the second year and the second teaching practice is done in the third year of their training program. Each teaching practice is one school term (about 4 months) long. During the teaching practice pre-service teachers are mentored by experienced science teachers. Lecturers from the teacher training college also assess pre-service teachers’ performance during teaching practice through lesson observations.

Data Collection Instrument and Analysis

Data was collected using a questionnaire that was developed by Ozmen and Kenan (2007). The questionnaire had 36 items related to changes of microscopic properties of a solid, liquid, and gas after phase changing, cooling, heating, and compressing. The four microscopic properties investigated were size of particles, spaces between particles, speed of particles, and number of particles. Participants had three alternative answers to choose from about what happens to size of particles, spaces between particles, speed of particles, and number of particles in a substance after phase changing, cooling, heating, and compressing – increase (I), decrease(D), or constant(C). As you can see in Tables 1-3 in the results section, items 1 to 4 focused on melting a solid, 5 to 6 on freezing a liquid, 9 to 12 on vaporizing a liquid, 13 to 16 on condensing a gas, 17 to 20 on heating matter, 21 to 24 on cooling matter, 25 to 28 on compressing a solid, 29 to 32 on compressing a liquid, and 33 to 36 on compressing a gas. Data was analyzed by coding participants’ responses (increase, decrease or constant) on each item. Then, the number of participants choosing each of the three possible responses was converted into a percentage.