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Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 20, Issue 1, Article 5 (Aug., 2019) |
The current study employed the phenomenological design, one of the qualitative research methods. Determination of the essence of how people acquire phenomenon by associating them with various meanings is known as phenomenology (Christensen, Johnson & Turner, 2015; Büyüköztürk, Kılıç Çakmak, Akgün, Karadeniz, & Demirel, 2016). The purpose of phenomenological research is to elicit individuals’ perceptions and experiences related to a phenomenon and the meaning they assign to it. The WAT was used to determine the relationships between the concepts in the unit “Atom and Atomic Structure”. In order to reveal the relationships of the key words with each other and their relationships with the response words given to them, mind maps were constructed on the basis of the data obtained with the WAT. In order to reveal the pre-service teachers’ mind maps and the relationships they established between the concepts, frequencies of the responses given to the concepts by the pre-service teachers were examined.
The current study was conducted on 51 pre-service teachers attending the Department of Science Teaching in the spring term of 2016-2017 academic year. In the selection of the study group, the purposive sampling method was used. This sampling method is preferred in studies focusing on special cases having certain characteristics (Büyüköztürk et al., 2016). While selecting the participants, the criterion pursued was their having taken the courses related to the concept of “Atom”. Therefore, the current study was conducted on 51 undergraduate students having taken the first-year and second-year general physics and chemistry courses.
The data of the current study were collected with the WAT developed by the researchers. Some concepts involved in the topic of atom were determined as the key words and then the WAT was developed. The developed WAT includes nine basic concepts related to the topic of atom. These concepts are atom, nucleus, electron, proton, neutron, orbit, spin, orbital and quark. In order to establish the content validity of the WAT, expert opinions of two physics educators and two science educators were sought. Expert opinions were elicited and in line with these opinions, some adjustments were made to the WAT and final form of the WAT was given. The concepts in the WAT given to the participants were written as a list and the participants were asked to write the first sentence related to the concept that comes to their minds next to each word.
The participants were asked to write five or 10 responses only for the concept of atom and 5 responses for the other concepts each. For each response, the participant was given 15 seconds. There is no certain rule for the determination of this time. This time is determined by checking how much time it takes for all the participants to finish writing or is pre-determined (Karamustafaoğlu et al., 2005, s. 51). For the current study, considering the academic and cognitive levels of the participants, it was determined that 15 seconds would be suitable for each response. Thus, for the concept of atom for which a total of 10 responses were asked, 150 seconds and for each of the other concepts, 75 seconds were given. The participants could decide when to pass from one word to another.
Throughout the application, first the pre-service teachers who had completed the general physics and general chemistry courses were determined. Then the WAT was administered to the selected pre-service teachers. By evaluating the pre-service teachers’ responses to the WAT, their perceptions of the concept of atom were determined. Following the WAT administration, the pre-service teachers started to take the modern physics course. Within the context of the modern physics course, they revised the topics of atomic structure and atomic models. After the completion of the modern physics course, it was attempted to determine whether the pre-service teachers’ perceptions of the concept of atom had changed. In the second stage of the study, the WAT was re-administered to investigate the effect of the modern physics course on the participants’ perceptions and then the change in their perceptions was explored.
First, the propositions written by the pre-service teachers for all the key concepts were examined. The propositions written by the pre-service teachers were evaluated as correct / wrong. Then, on the basis of the pre-service teachers’ responses, the mind maps related to the concept of atom were prepared. While preparing the mind maps, the pre-service teachers’ responses were subjected to content analysis. What was done within the context of the content analysis was to gather similar data under certain concepts or themes and then to interpret these concepts and themes at the level that is comprehensible to readers (Yıldırım & Şimşek, 2013). After the similar responses given by the pre-service teachers were gathered together and analyzed, a frequency table was formed. The words that were responded to with similar meanings were classified according to their repetition frequency. In this table, the responses’ repetition frequencies were checked. Depending on these frequencies, mind maps were elicited. The quantity and quality of the words associated with the key concept are used to determine the extent to which the key concept has been understood. The number of the response words is one of the methods most commonly used in the interpretation process of the data of this technique (Ercan et al., 2010). While establishing mind maps, the “Cut Point (CP)” technique proposed by Bahar et al. (1999) and used in many studies in the literature (Ercan, et al., 2010; Özatlı & Bahar, 2010; Işıklı, Taşdere & Göz, 2011; Atabek Yiğit, 2016) was employed. The CP technique; instead of complicated schemes, presents more comprehensible relationships between factors in the process of determination of mind maps. For this reason, it is a considerably enlightening technique (Bahar et al., 1999).
In order to determine whether the modern physics course taken by the pre-service teachers had affected the pre-service teachers’ perceptions of the concept of atom, the mind maps prepared “before the modern physics course” (BMPC) and “after the modern physics course” (AMPC) were compared.
