Examination of pre-service science teachers' opinions on laboratory practices, experiment reports, and Vee diagrams

This study aims to examine the opinions of pre-service science teachers about laboratory practices, experiment reports, and Vee diagrams. The study utilizes the descriptive survey method since it aims to reveal the opinions of the students about the Vee Diagram practice. The study was carried out with a total of 36 1st year students studying in the Science Education Department at Alanya Alaaddin Keykubat University taking the Chemistry I laboratory practices course in the fall semester of the academic year 2021-2022 with in a period of 14 weeks. In the first week of the course, students were provided with general information about the course, laboratory safety rules, tools, and equipment used in the laboratory as well as laboratory reports (classical and Vee diagram). The students were asked to prepare their experimental reports in the classical experimental report format for the experiments conducted in the second and third weeks, and in Vee diagram format in the experiments conducted after the fourth week. 9 experiment reports "Separation of Mixtures, Separation by Distillation, Reaction Types, Law of Mass Conservation, Physical States of Matter, Ionic Solids and Conductivity, Comparison of Gas Propagation Velocities, Liquid Surface Tension, Liquid Fluidity and Viscosity" in Chemistry I laboratory practices course were prepared in Vee diagram format by the students. Following the practices, a total of 4 data collection tools, 3 quantitative and 1 qualitative, were used to reveal the opinions of pre-service science teachers about the studies carried out in laboratory practices. Quantitative data were collected by means of "Survey of Pre-service Teachers' Opinions on Laboratory Practices", "Survey of Pre-service Science Teachers' Perception on Laboratory Experiment Reports", and "Scale of Attitude towards Vee Diagram" while qualitative data were collected by means of "Form of Students' Opinions on Vee Diagram Use". During the analysis of the quantitative data used in the study, percentage and frequency calculations were made from descriptive statistics. The program Tableau 2021.1 was used for the visualization of the data, and content analysis was performed for the analysis of qualitatively collected student documents. In the quantitative results of the study, the highest positive opinion was for the item "Laboratory studies reach their targets" with a participation of 94.3% according to the results of the survey of the pre-service teachers' opinions on laboratory practices. According to the results of the survey of pre-service teachers' perspectives on experimental reports, 80% of them stated that they were more careful during the experiment as they would write a report at the end of the experiment. Regarding Pre-service Teachers' attitudes towards Vee diagrams, the majority (45.7%+34.3%) responded positively to the item "Vee diagram is a very good tool for us to see the experimental process as a whole." In the qualitative findings of the study, regarding the opinions of the pre-service teachers on Vee diagram, the majority of pre-service teachers stated that they wanted to prepare their experimental reports in the "Vee diagram format." Pre-service teachers think that the use of Vee diagram as an experiment report is a useful learning material in illustrating the relationship between theory and practice, eliminating misconceptions, learning new information, and realizing meaningful learning. The pre-service science teachers stated that they would teach and have this method applied by their students when they became teachers in the future. As a result of the study, it can be inferred that the preparation of the experimental reports, which is an important part of the laboratory practices course, in Vee diagram format is a highly useful learning tool for pre-service teachers. Undoubtedly, laboratory practices are an important part of science courses. Today, the importance of innovative educational orientations is increasing day by day. The use of such innovative educational practices in laboratory courses will surely contribute to the training of more qualified teachers. Keywords: Laboratory Practices, Experiment Report, Vee Diagram.