Investigation of the pre-service science teachers' use of heuristic in some chemistry topics

Identifying short-cut strategies (heuristics), which are frequently used by students and reduce the cognitive path in students, and how these heuristics cause bias in intuitive judgment and decision-making processes will help educators to create educational strategies that can further develop analytical ways of thinking. The aim of this research is to determine the heuristics that are effective in the reasoning processes of science teacher candidates on the topics of "hydrogen bonding", "relative acidity / basicity strength of compounds", "ranking compounds according to their melting / boiling points", and "comparing the solubility of compounds " and is to explain the working mechanisms of these heuristics in a way specific to the field of chemistry based on the ten heuristic models proposed by Talanquer. The phenomenographic research method, which is one of the qualitative research methods, was used in this study. The research was carried out at Fırat University Faculty of Education in the spring semester of the 2018-2019 academic year. In the study, separate interviews were conducted with 30 pre-service teachers enrolled in the Science Education Program for each chemistry subject mentioned above. During the interviews, the participants were asked to answer the questions in the interview protocols prepared on the above-mentioned chemistry subjects. As a result of the research, it was determined that the ten heuristics proposed by Talanquer affected the participants' comments on the mentioned chemistry topics. In addition, as a result of these effects, it was found that students mostly used short-cut strategies instead of effective analytical reasoning and thus did not evaluate the target attributes meant in the questions. Different answer patterns were obtained from the answers given by the participants to each different chemistry question they were asked. It has been determined that the proportions of those containing the correct answer among these designs are generally quite low. In addition, the frequency of use of the heuristics, which are effective in the process of solving each chemistry question asked by the students, was also determined. The working mechanisms of heuristics, which are effective in the above-mentioned chemistry subjects, are also explained in a way specific to the field of chemistry with the researches made within the scope of this thesis. Key words: Science Education, Hydrogen Bond, Heuristics, Chemistry Education, Reasoning