مرکز منطقه ای اطلاع رساني علوم و فناوري - DETERMINING UNDERSTANDINGS RELATED TO THE PARTICULATE NATURE OF MATTER OF STUDENTS AT SCIENCE EDUCATION

Abstract :

The aim of this study was to determine the students at science teacher education program in the firstyear class understanding about the particulate nature of matter and determine the effect of experimentsin removing the misconceptions. The sample of the study was 105 students study at science teacher education program in the first year class. The study is conducted by pretest-posttest experimental design control without group. It was used two open-ended questions of a test (The Particulate Nature of Matter Test- PNMT) about the subject as pre and post-test for data collecting tool. After the pre-test it got an experiment related to the subject to students and then PNMT implemented again. Students’ answers which before and after the experiment was analyzed by dividing into categories, their frequencies and percentages were calculated and compared. So, it was determined how changes was occurred students’ understanding about the subject and whether continue misconceptions or not. According to findings obtained from the study, many of students have deficiencies about the movements of particles at solid, liquid and gas phases. It was determined that students have some misconceptions. For example, “Because solids are hard, the space between their molecules is the least”, “solids cannot move because they haven’t rotational and translational motion”, “matters on liquid phase move faster than solid matters”, “gases move as soaring” and “matters have holistic structure not particulate”. After the experiment, it was observed an increase in students’ understanding about the subject but it was determined to be not sufficient. Further, it was seen that some students’ misconceptions were continued after the experiment. From this point of view, it is suggested that different experiments and materials which can eliminate and prevent these misconceptions are used.