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

Sample

The sample of this study consisted of 81 freshman pre-service science teachers (female 42, male 39) at a public university in the southwest part of Turkey. Fraenkel and Wallen (2006) suggest that number of participants for a correlation study should be fifty and over. In the present study, the mean age of preservice science teachers was twenty. Their age ranges from nineteen to twenty-three years old. These preservice teachers were involved in the study voluntarily. After these preservice science teachers complete the program, they will have certificate to teach science to 6th through 8th grade students. Preservice science teachers took science content (Physics, Chemistry, and Biology) and pedagogical courses (science methods and field education) in order to graduate from their science teacher education program.

Instrumentation

Chemistry Attitude Scale
In order to measure students’ attitudes towards chemistry, Chemistry Attitude Scale (CAS) which was developed by Geban, Ertepinar, Yilmaz, Altin, and Sahbaz (1994) were used. The instrument has one dimension. It has 15 items with five-point Likert type (fully agree, agree, undecided, disagree, fully disagree). The internal consistency reliability of the instrument was found 0.83. The minimum score for CAS is 15 and the maximum score is 75. The higher scores in CAS lead the more positive attitudes towards chemistry. The whole items could be obtained from the study of Geban, Ertepinar, Yilmaz, Altin, and Sahbaz (1994).

Some items from this instrument are as follow:
I like reading books related to science.
Science is not important in our daily life.
I get bored when I study science.
I like solving chemistry problems.
I would like to learn more thing about chemistry subjects.

Chemical Kinetics Concept Test
This test was developed by Balci (2006) for measuring students’ understanding on chemical kinetics. Distractors in the concept test include misconceptions about chemical kinetics topic (Balci, 2006). This test covers the concepts of rate of reaction and its measurement, collision theory, activation energy, the factors affecting rate of reaction (concentration effect, temperature effect, catalyst effect, surface area effect), reaction mechanism, rate law, and order of reactions. The instrument includes 20 multiple-choice items and each item rated as five-point. Students’ test scores could range from 0 to 100. The reliability of the instrument was found 0.75. One item from this instrument, which represents whole questions in terms of the format and content is given below:

Which one of them is correct related to the rate of reaction?
a) Reaction rate is the change in amount per unit time
b) Reaction rate is the time from the beginning of the reaction to the end of the reaction
c) All reactions occur at the same rate
d) The step determining the reaction rate is the fastest step in reaction mechanism
e) The reaction rate describes only by reactants

Data Collection and Analysis

Two instruments were implemented to preservice science teachers by the research assistant who does not included in the present study in order to eliminate the experimenter bias for internal validity. Response rate of the questionnaires was around 90%. Volunteer preservice teachers completed the questionnaires in class while research assistant was also in the class in order to answer any questions of preservice teachers. All of the questionnaires were implemented by the research assistant and they were returned to the authors of this paper. All of these were conducted to control the experimenter bias for threats to internal validity.

In the first part of the data analysis, we tried to validate the CAS and Chemical Kinetics Concept Test. These tests were applied after teaching the chemical kinetics concepts,in the context of Chemistry class but the aim was not to test the effects of Chemistry class on pre-service science teachers’ attitudes towards science and misconceptions on science. Instead of this, the aim was to explore the current condition of freshman pre-service science teachers’ attitudes towards chemistry and their misconceptions about the subject of chemical kinetics. The.CAS had one dimension and had positive and negative items. Negative items were reversed and then a total score for each preservice science teacher was calculated. Preservice science teachers having higher scores on CAS reflected more positive attitudes towards chemistry. The reliability and validity of the CAS have been provided in several studies (e.g., Gurses, Acikyildiz, Dogar & Sozbilir, 2007; Pınarbasi, Canpolat, Bayrakceken & Geban, 2006; Tastan, Yalcinkaya & Boz, 2008).

Chemical Kinetics Concept Test was validated by researchers. All of the items were evaluated by two experts in order to determine the content validity of the instrument. In order to figure out whether the difficulty level of the test is appropriate to the sample, the test was administered to the other section of the class. Then, preservice teachers were interviewed about the questions whether they correctly understood the items of the test. According to the interview and the other section application of the test, some questions were altered and removed. After that the concept test administered to the sample.

In the second part of the data analysis, Pearson Product Correlation was conducted in order to determine how attitudes toward chemistry might be associated with Chemical Kinetics Concept Test.