Secondary students' and prospective science teachers' perceptions, and reasoning about chemical solutions: A cross-age study

Abstract

This study aims to compare secondary school students' and prospective science teachers' perceptions and their reasoning about chemical solutions. A questionnaire was administered to 140 volunteered secondary students who participated in the study from Grade 9 (n=50) and Grade 11 (n=90) as well as 181 prospective science teachers (first-year, n=89; last-year, n=92). The questionnaire consisted of five two-tiered questions and one multiple-choice question with solubility problem. In the questionnaire, the first-tier of items 1-3 aimed to determine the participants' perceptions about solution types. The first-tier of items 4 and 5 aimed to examine the participants' perceptions about the concentration of a saturated solution when half of water evaporates from the solution, and when a small amount of solute is added into the solution, respectively. Second-tier of the items 1-5 also were asked participants to write the reasons for their answers and the responses used to analyze their reasoning. Multiple-choice question aimed to explore the participants' skills to solve a solubility problem. Responses were analyzed by quantitative and qualitative methods. The findings showed that participants have difficulties in naming solution types correctly and perceiving concentration and solubility concepts. First-year prospective science teachers' answered the items 1, 2, 4 and 6 more correctly than the last-year counterparts do, and the rates of some misconceptions held by them were lower than those of last-year counterparts. © Sila Science.