Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Journal of Pedagogical Research, cilt.5, sa.3, ss.80-104, 2021 (Hakemli Dergi)
The present investigation aims to analyze the knowledge levels and chemical representation levels of preservice
primary school teachers (PPSTs) on the experiment of distillation. For this purpose, the crosssectional
survey technique, one of the quantitative research designs was employed. The study was carried
out at a Faculty of Education in the Aegean Region of Turkey with 79 freshman pre-service teachers
enrolled in the Department of Primary Education. This group is of particular interest as they are the last
class who had taken the General Chemistry course since this course was removed from the curriculum in
2018. A Distillation Experiment Worksheet (DEW), which consisted of 9 open-ended questions involving
the macroscopic, sub-microscopic, and symbolic representations was used as data collection instrument in
the study. The worksheets were analyzed with the document analysis method according to the categories
created within the scope of the chemical representation levels, and these categories were established in line
with direct statements of the PPSTs. Results indicated that PPSTs confused the heterogeneous and
homogeneous mixtures, physical properties such as volatility and density, and they were unable to
differentiate between boiling and evaporation. The most crucial result of the study was that the PPSTs had
difficulties in establishing a relationship between macroscopic and sub-microscopic representations. For
this reason, they could not demonstrate the interactions between solvent and solute molecules at the submicroscopic
level during molecular dissolution and they could not predict how the intermolecular
interaction changes during the condensation and the distance between the particles. Based on the results of
this analysis, our study provides several recommendations for lecturers in the last part of this paper.