Determining misconceptions of teachers on electrochemistry and the effect of teaching method on the success of pre-service teachers over electrochemistry

Electrochemistry is regarded as one of the most difficult subjects that are difficult to teach. On the other hand, electrochemical concepts frequently get involved in daily life issues like batteries, auto accumulators and corrosion phenomena. Therefore it is absolutely essential that students learn these concepts so as to establish an accurate and lasting image in their mind.The changes in the education paradigm brought about notable changes in the approaches to the methods used in chemistry teaching. The techniques, mostly student centered, are based upon the principle that can be put briefly as ?The learning process of each person is unique to him/her. Every learner comes up with a mind that has some degree of preoccupation on the subject to be thought and during the learning process, new concepts are built upon the already existing ones.? That is why the development of new methods which take students into the center and ease the learning process in chemistry is of great importance.One of these methods is role playing. Although it has been used in teaching some chemical concepts it is yet to be used in widespread manner. Therefore, we decided to employ this method in teaching the electrochemical concepts. If we describe role playing as improvising different events, situations and concepts by actions it can easily be said that it may be useful for the creation of abstract concepts in a more solid way in the minds of the students. This makes it a suitable method in education.The purpose of this study is to determine the misconceptions of the chemistry teachers in public schools related to electrochemistry concepts and the difficulties they face in teaching them and compare the effect of role playing on pre-service teachers with computer supported 5E and conventional teaching methods when their prior knowledge, logical thinking skills, their attitudes towards chemistry are effectively controlled.A group of chemistry teachers working in various schools in Ankara were given an electrochemistry concepts test and had been an interview with three teachers. Apart from that an experimental study was carried out on three groups of first year teacher training students totaling in number to 123 and studying in the department of Science Teaching, Faculty of Education Gazi University in 2005-2006 academic year. One of the groups was designed as the control and the other two as experimental groups. The mean age in the sample was 18,75. All of the students which participated in the study had been taught by the conventional method up to that time. All three groups were subjected to logical thinking test, mental conversion test, attitude and conception test towards chemistry and the concept test related to the electrochemical concepts in order to control their prior knowledge, their logical thinking skills, their spatial thinking skills and their attitudes and conceptions towards chemistry. The data obtained from these tests were evaluated by the use of ANCOVA analysis.At the end of the research, various misconceptions on the electrochemical concepts were identified among the chemistry teachers working in the high schools of Ankara. Besides, the results indicate that the students educated with the role play model according to constructivist approach scored significantly higher marks in electrochemical concept test compared to the ones who were educated with the conventional method or computer supported 5E approaches. They were also observed to relate the concepts in a much better way. It can be concluded that they carried out a much meaningful learning process.