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Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 21, Issue 1, Article 7 (Dec., 2021) |
A case study is used as a research method in this study. This method is an empirical inquiry that investigates a phenomenon within its real-life context, when the boundaries between the phenomenon and context are not clearly evident and multiple sources of evidence are used (Yin, 2003).
The participants of this study were 59 pre-service science teachers of Mathematics and Science Education department attending the course Physics II and the lecturer delivering this course. During their pre-service training, the participants attend three courses respectively Physics I, Physics II and Physics III, covering mechanics, electricity and magnetism and heat-optics-modern physics. Each course lasts one semester with 4 hours (2 theoretical and 2 practical) a week.
Description of Physics II Courses
The lecturer of the course uses the source books of Physics for Scientists and Engineers with Modern Physics (Serway & Beicner, 2010) and Physics for Scientists and Engineers (Fishbane, Gasiorowicz & Thornton, 2003). She prefers using multiple materials because of their different but complementary style.
The lecturer first summarizes the previous lesson briefly, checks homework, if there is any, and checks the prior knowledge of the students about the new subject and concepts by using the question/answer method. After then during she organizes the development phase of the course by considering both conceptual structure of the subject and students' prior knowledge. In this process, multiple representations such as tables, graphics and models (mathematical, three-dimensional) are used to determine and eliminate the alternative concepts, misconceptions about electric field and the approaches focused on conceptual teaching are preferred in the courses. In the concluding phase of the course, procedural skill-oriented problems/questions’ solutions are supplied. Finally, some problems are given as homework and the class ends with a short summary. In addition to theoretical studies, practical work including laboratory experiment is performed. Laboratory sessions are carried out, using the inductive method, before theoretical lectures, and confirmatory laboratory applications are preferred following theoretical lectures.
Data collection process and analyses
Data collection consists of questions and answers of two written examinations carried out in Physics II course with pre-service science teachers. A midterm and a final exam taken in the spring semester of the 2018-2019 academic years have been considered. There was a total of 13 questions in the midterm exam, 8 of which being related to electric field. In the final exam 4 out of 14 questions were related to electric filed. Thus, a total of 12 questions about the electric field were taken into consideration for this research. These questions are coded as Q1, Q2, …., Q12.
Analysis of Written assessments questions
For the analysis of the written exam questions, PCKs taxonomy (P stands for Procedural, C for Conceptual, and K for Knowledge) was used as suggested by Phuong (2019). Table I introduces this taxonomy consisting of five categories (PK1, PK2, CK1, CK2 and PCK) and their contents.
Table I. Content of levels in the PCK taxonomy
Content of levels in the PCK taxonomy Categories
Students are able to …
PK1. Familiar procedures
…perform simple calculations; apply familiar formulas, procedures, algorithms.
PK2. Complex procedures
…perform complex calculations, high level reasons, link different representations of the considered concepts.
CK1.Conceptual understanding
…recognize and explain the underlying concepts; recognize the relationship between the considered and other concepts.
CK2. Conceptual applying
…apply the considered concept in problem-solving; apply them to a real situation and relate them to other concepts.
PCK.Procedural and conceptual knowledge integration
…combine procedural knowledge and conceptual knowledge to solve problems; discover a new situation in which there is a need to integrate procedural and conceptual knowledge to solve a problem.
Analysis of Students' Responses
The answers to the questions about the electric field topic given by the pre-service science teachers are analyzed by using Abraham et al. (1994)'s level determination scale below.
[0] No Understanding (NU): Blank, repeats question; irrelevant or unclear response;
[1] Alternative Conception (AC): Scientifically incorrect responses containing illogical or incorrect information;
[2] Partial Understanding with Specific Alternative Conception (PU/AC): Responses showing that the concept is partly understood but with an alternative conception;
[3] Partial Understanding (PU): Responses partially in line with scientifically accepted responses
[4] Sound Understanding (SU): Responses containing all components of the scientifically accepted response.
The change in the achievement of pre-service science teachers in the PCK categories was determined by analyzing the answers to the questions in the same category. If the number of questions in any category is more than one, the average score (arithmetic mean) is obtained from the questions in each category, which is calculated and individual change graphs of the students are drawn.
In order to ensure reliability in the research, the research process was clearly expressed, the data were analyzed by the researchers at different times and the Kappa statistics was used to determine the reliability between coders (Cohen, 1960; Fleiss, 1971). In this study the degree of agreement between coders scoring at the classification level was calculated as 0.82. According to the agreement levels suggested by Landis and Koch (1977), the range of 0.81-1.00 is interpreted as high agreement.
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