Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 20, Issue 1, Article 5 (Aug., 2019) Özlem ERYILMAZ MUŞTU and Emin Berk ÖZKAN Determining the pre-service teachers’ perceptions of atom and atomic structure through word association test Contents Next

Determining the pre-service teachers’ perceptions of atom and atomic structure through word association test

 

Özlem ERYILMAZ MUŞTU^* and Emin Berk ÖZKAN

Aksaray University, TURKEY

^*Corresponding Author's E-mail: ozlemeryilmaz@gmail.com

Received 26 Jul., 2018
Revised 21 Aug., 2019

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Contents

• Abstract
• Introduction
• Significance of the Research
• Purpose of the Study
• Method
• Participants
• Data Collection Tools
• Findings
  • Findings related to propositions written by the pre-service teachers for the key concepts
  • Findings related to the mind maps derived from the responses written by the pre-service teachers to the key concepts
• Results
• Discussions and Interpretation
• References

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Abstract

The aim of this study is to determine the pre-service teachers’ perceptions of atom and atomic structure through a word association test. It is important to concretize the concepts having a significant influence on the learning of subjects. Through this concretization, students’ understanding of the concepts and accordingly of the subjects is facilitated. The word association test used in the current study consists of nine key concepts chosen from the unit “Atom and Atomic Structure”. It was given 15 seconds to the participants for each key concept. Content analysis was conducted for the analysis of the data. The frequency table was formed taking into consideration the frequency of given responses. Accordingly, the mind maps were generated to indicate the relations among concepts. With the word association pre-test, it is found that the pre-service teachers couldn’t express many concepts related to the unit correctly. Although the findings of the post-test indicate that there is slight increase in the pre-service teachers’ correct expression of the concepts, the results show that the pre-service teachers still have difficulty in perceiving the concepts in the unit “Atom and Atomic Structure”.

Keywords: Atom, atomic structure, cognitive structure, perception, word association test, mind maps, pre-service science teachers.