Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
19th Asian Chemical Congress, İstanbul, Türkiye, 8 - 14 Temmuz 2023, ss.118
Chemistry is an abstract discipline, so it is among the difficult courses to learn and teach. In order to teach chemistry subjects better, the relationship between chemical representations (macroscopic, particulate and symbolic) should be established correctly. By focusing on chemical representations in their lessons, chemistry teachers have great importance for students to learn chemistry meaningfully. In order for students to fully understand chemical representations, teachers should know the chemical representations well and be able to express them correctly to their students. The aim of this study is to determine the level of understanding of chemistry teachers’ chemical representations of chemical equilibrium and their ability to transform between between these representations. The sample of the study consists of twelve chemistry teachers working in the Ministry of National Education in Turkey. In this study, a case study, one of the qualitative research methods, was used. Data collected through an open-ended questionnaire called The Chemical Equilibrium and Chemical Representations Test which was prepared by the researchers. In the test, there are questions that require explanations or drawings in macroscopic, symbolic and particle sizes regarding the factors affecting the chemical equilibrium by considering four different chemical reactions, and also requiring transform between these chemical representations. The data were analyzed by content analysis method, and the answers of the participants were coded as “correct”, “partially correct” and “wrong”. Through data analysis participants’ understanding levels in all three chemical representation levels on chemical topic and their ability to transform between representations were evaluated. As a result of the study, it was observed that while most of the participants’ understandings in the macroscopic and symbolic levels were good, those in the particulate level were insufficient. Although the majority of the chemistry teachers participating in the study made correct explanations in macroscopic level, it was observed that they could not draw correctly in particulate level. In addition, it was observed that the participants in the study had difficulties while transforming among chemical representations. Moreover, it was seen that the participants gave the correct answer in the transformation from the particle to the macroscopic representation at the most, while they gave the least correct answer in the transformation from the particle to the symbolic representation.