An investigation of chemistry student Teachers’ understanding of some chemical concepts

Studies in recent years show that, misconceptions have a significant place in the studies related to chemistry teaching and learning. Many researchers have investigated the degree of understanding and misconceptions about diverse chemistry concepts [1-2]. The researches show that misconceptions among students may have originated from the misconceptions of the teachers [3]. For this reason, chemistry student teachers will have an important role in how students will understand and learn the chemical concepts. In this study was investigated the understanding of chemistry student teachers concerning the “chemistry as a branch of science” and “reaction” concepts. The study, conducted with totally 42 chemistry student teachers (all at fourth semester) who are enrolled in the Farhangian University. The data were collected through a few pre-prepared open-ended questions asked extemporaneous at the beginning of a new course.The results of this study show that while 74% of student teachers the concepts of chemistry and chemical reaction have defined correctly, 24% of them on the concept of chemical reaction misunderstanding and 9.5% of them have unrealistic and imaginary understandings about “chemistry as a branch of science”. Despite the important role of chemistry in the environment, only 12% of student teachers were referred to it. Most misunderstandings responses observed among student teachers were similar knowing the physical changes by chemical reaction (60%) and similar knowing mix the starting material by combining them for reaction (20%). This misconception arises from using words that have different meanings in everyday life with literature. The part of these misconceptions arise from the description inappropriate in the classroom by teachers.