Pre-service chemistry teachers' conceptual understandings of solution chemistry in the context of multi-representational instruction

Abstract

This study aimed to explore the effectiveness of Multi-Representational Instruction in pre-service chemistry teachers’ conceptual understandings of solution chemistry and to identify the characteristics of individual participants’ conceptual understandings of the types of solutions from before beginning the instruction to immediately after completing the instruction to five-months after completing the instruction. This study was conducted with third-year pre-service chemistry teachers at a state university in Istanbul in the fall of 2010. There were a total of 14 participants, including 10 female and four male. It was a mixed method study combined with quantitative and qualitative research methods. Quantitative part of the study included a one-group quasi-experimental design with pre, post, and delayed post-interview. Qualitative part of the study involved verbal data (e.g., interviews, collection of student artifacts, field notes) and descriptive data analysis procedures, but the main data source was interviews. During the interviews, the questions were asked according to an interview protocol which was modified from a two-tailed diagnostic instrument developed by Adadan and Savasci (2012). In the quantitative analysis, the numeric points were given to each participant's responses about the different aspects of solution chemistry. Their total scores were calculated for the pre, post, and delayed post-interview. In the qualitative analysis, each participant's kinds of conceptual understandings about the types of solutions were identified for the pre, post and delayed post-interview, and the changes in each participant’s kinds of conceptual understandings from pre to post and then to delayed post-interview were examined. According to data analysis results, it was concluded that the Multi-Representational instruction were effective for developing the participants’ conceptual understandings of solution chemistry from pre to post-instruction and maintaining such conceptual understandings over a five-month period.