Preservice science teachers’ attitudes towards chemistry and misconceptions about chemical kinetics

The major goal of the science education is to make students scientifically literate. Lederman & Nies (1998) defined scientific literacy as the understanding of the science content, science processes (such as observation, data organization, hypotheses generation, hypothesis testing, data interpretation, and conclusions inferences from data) and using science content and processes for solving personal and societal problems. Bybee (1997) proposed multidimensionality of the scientific literacy and stated that scientific literacy has four dimensions: nominal, functional, conceptual and procedural, and multidimensional. Words and questions were classified as scientific by nominal scientific literates; but they minimally understand science topics so they have misconceptions and naïve explanations (Bybee, 1997). Functional scientific literates use scientific vocabulary, define terms and concepts, memorize scientific facts, vocabulary and information and understand scientific contents (Bybee, 1997). Conceptual and procedural scientific literates comprehend scientific conceptual schemes, procedural knowledge, skills and processes (as cited in Boujaoude (2002), p.143). Multidimensional scientific literates comprehend the nature and history of science, links to other disciplines and science and society (Bybee 1995 & 1997). There is no teaching sequence for scientific literacy dimensions, it develops both horizontal and vertically. For example, in order to develop functional literacy of students, students’ vocabulary could be improved. Thus, students could understand the relations between concepts and underlying main ideas and conceptual literacy of students could be enhanced.

One of the dimensions of the scientific literacy is to understand the concepts and principles of science. Ausubel (1968) stated that the most important indication of learning is what the learner already knows because an image or an example directs the learner to relevant prior experience or learning and also points forward to new material. Like Ausubel (1968), Shapiro (2004) and Dochy, Segers, and Buehl (1999) stressed the importance of prior knowledge in learning and they stated that students shape their own meaning according to their prior knowledge. Errors are characteristics of initial phases of learning because students’ existence knowledge is insufficient and supports only partial understanding. However, many researchers revealed that students’ views about an image or an example are not matched with scientific views. Even after formal instruction, students learn concepts different from scientific consensus, and these wrong ideas are called “misconceptions”. Misconceptions mean the difference between learners’ understanding and scientifically accepted understanding of the concept. However, they do not mean the lack of knowledge, factual errors or incorrect definitions; they are the demonstration of the constructed explanations of students in response to their prior knowledge and experience. Misconceptions hinder students’ learning, and as Ausubel (1968) stated they interrupts the formation of relations between ideas, concepts and information and also linkage between concepts. Thus, students could not establish meaningful learning.

Many researchers explored students’ misconceptions about some scientific concepts and tried to overcome misconceptions by suggesting alternative teaching methods. In Chemistry, one of the concepts studied was reaction rate. While a group of researchers investigated students’ misconceptions on reaction rate , another group of researchers investigated teaching methods for overcoming misconceptions (e.g., Balci, 2006; Cakmakci, Donnely & Leach, 2005; Cakmakci, Leach & Donnely, 2006; Tastan, Kirik & Boz, 2010; Tastan, Kirik, Yalcinkaya & Boz, 2010). However, Kahveci (2009) stated that most of the studies on the Chemistry misconceptions were conducted with primary and secondary education students and there is not much research on higher grades such as preservice teachers, or undergraduate students or faculty members. Meanwhile, as Kolomuc and Tekin (2011) stated, one of the concepts that were not studied much with pre-service elementary teachers was reaction rate. Thus, in order to make both elementary students and pre-service elementary teachers scientifically literate, the first step is to evaluate pre-service teachers’ subject matter knowledge (Kahveci, 2009). Therefore, in this study, pre-service science teachers’ conceptual understanding of the reaction rate were investigated and we could get some idea related to these pre-service teachers’ misconceptions about chemical kinetics. Chemical kinetics could be considered as a central topic for general chemistry curricula, since it is composed of more than one topic; such as, the rate of reaction, activation energy, factors affecting reaction rate and collision theory. Thus, chemical kinetics could be prerequisite for understanding of the relation between chemical change and energy, the types of chemical reactions and the chemical change processes (Kolomuc & Tekin, 2011, p. 85). Therefore, in the present study, pre-service science teachers’ misconceptions about chemical kinetics will be examined.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, 1989) stated that rather than scientific knowledge, the other components of the scientific literacy are understanding of the scientific process and the orientation of attitudes during the learning process (As cited in Wu, Shein, Tsai, Chou, Wu, Liu, Chiu, Hung, Chao & Huang, 2012). The AAAS (1989) also mentioned that people perceive science as an attitude. Ministry of Turkish Education (MEB, 2004) also focused on scientific literacy dimensions and MEB mentioned that attitudes toward science is the one of the most important dimensions of the scientific literacy. Both AAAS (1989) and MEB (2004)’s description of scientific literacy suggests the importance of the students’ attitudes toward science.

In order to develop students’ scientific literacy, they should have positive attitudes towards science. Attitudes toward science can be defined as the feelings, beliefs and values held about an object which may the enterprise of science, school science, the impact of science on society or scientists themselves (Osborne, Simon, & Collins, 2003, p.1053). Pre-service teachers are going to be teachers and when they are going to be a scientifically literate; their students are going to be scientifically literate because they could influence their students. Thus, in this study, pre-service teachers’ attitudes towards chemistry is examined.

Students’ science achievement and their misconceptions are affected by their attitudes towards science. There are some research studies showing the relation between students’ attitudes towards science and their science achievement (Freedman, 1997; Ingram & Nelson, 2006; Osborne & Collins, 2001; Simpson & Oliver, 1990). The result of most of these studies demonstrated that there is a positive relationship between students’ attitudes towards chemistry and their science achievement (e.g., Osborne & Collins, 2001; Simpson & Oliver, 1990). However, some research studies revealed that high school students’ attitudes was negatively correlated with science achievement (Freedman, 1997). In addition to these studies, Ingram and Nelson (2006) stated that science achievement could not be predicted by attitude, and attitude explains only moderate amount of variation in achievement. Thus, it could be stated that there is no consensus on the extent of the relationship between attitudes towards science and science achievement. The reason of these different research results concerning this relationship could stem from the domain specific nature of attitudes.

Osborne & Collins (2001) stated that for each different domain of science, such as chemistry, biology and physics, students had different attitudes towards different domains of the science. For example, students’ attitudes towards chemistry could be different from their attitudes towards physics. Salta and Tzougraki (2004) mentioned that there is much research related to attitudes towards science in general, however; there is not much research related to attitudes towards specific domains of the science. For example, there are few studies that investigated attitudes towards chemistry (Kaya & Geban, 2011; Menis, 1983, 1989; Salta & Tzougraki, 2004). Salta & Tzougraki (2004) investigated the relation between 11th grade students’ attitudes towards chemistry and their chemistry achievement and reported that there is a moderate correlation between these variables.

Rationale of the Present Study:
This study is important for several reasons: First, the ultimate aim of science education is to make students scientifically literate. In order to make students scientifically literate, one of the requirements is that students should have adequate understanding about science concepts. However, the literature reported that students have many misconceptions and these misconceptions could hinder learning of science concepts, thus, students could not achieve meaningful science learning. It is important for pre-service teachers to establish meaningful learning during their teacher education because they are going to be science teacher in future and their misconceptions could influence their students’ misconceptions. One of the most important sources of students’ misconceptions were teachers so it is essential to reveal and remedy pre-service teachers’ misconceptions on chemistry topics.

As a second reason of conducting the present study, we observed that chemistry misconceptions particularly reaction rate concepts were mostly studied with primary and secondary-level school students and there is not much study on pre-service teachers (Kahveci, 2009; Kolumuc & Tekin, 2011). Therefore, we need research studies focusing on pre-service teachers. Third, chemical kinetics is one of the central topics of general chemistry curricula and it is prerequisite for understanding of some chemistry concepts and processes: relations between chemical change and energy, types of chemical reactions, and chemical change processes (Kolomuc & Tekin, 2011). Thus, we need studies particularly focusing on chemical kinetics. As a last reason of conducting the present study, we can claim that we need to have much more study investigating relationships between attitudes towards chemistry and misconceptions about chemistry. The current literature showed that there is an inconsistency about relationships between attitudes towards chemistry and misconceptions about chemistry, so we need further research studies exploring these relationships.

The purpose of the present study is to investigate relationships between preservice science teachers’ chemistry achievement and their attitudes towards chemistry. The research questions of the study are:

What are the preservice science teachers’ attitudes towards chemistry?
What are the preservice science teachers’ misconceptions about chemical kinetics?
Is there any relationship between preservice science teachers’ attitudes towards chemistry and their misconceptions about chemical kinetics?