Pre-service science teachers' misconceptions about particulate nature of matter

Particulate nature of matter is one of the main topics of the chemistry. This topic is also related with other main topics such as change of states, physical- chemical changes, chemical bonds included in primary and middle school programs. Misconceptions are thought to be one of the crucial barriers in effective learning to this end it is very important to determine pre-service science teachers understanding in the science topics to be teached. The main purpose of this study is to investigate misconceptions of pre-service science teachers about particulate nature of matter. This research was conducted with 260 pre-service science teachers in their 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th year in Abant Izzet Baysal University. First phase of Data collection includes ?Particulate Nature of Matter Conception Questionnaire? and the second phase includes ?semi-structured interview?. In order to increase the reliability of the results obtained in the first phase and in order to give an opportunity to the students to make comment about the topic, 12 pre-service science teachers among 1st and 2nd class and 6 pre-service science teachers among 3rd and 4th class students were selected and semi-structured interviews were conducted with these students. Pre-service science teachers were selected randomly among the participants who got points one standard deviation below the arithmetic average, one standard deviation above the arithmetic average and near avarage based on the results of particulate nature of matter conception questionaire. The results of the study shows that pre-service science teachers have many misconceptions about particulate nature of matter. These misconeptions are related with some subjects such as live property of atoms, visibility of particles, size of particles, physical state of particles, solubility, weight of particles, movement of particles, whether all of the properties of matter are the same with its particles or not, how it will effect its particles if a change occurs in matter, structures that is made up of atoms. Analysis of the data depicts that pre-service science teachers know matter is made up of particles and they can usually make correct comments about macroscobic matters. However they make limited comments about microscobic structure of matter. Some pre-service science teachers think that if a change occurs in a macroscobic matter, the same change occurs in its particles. Some of them think that if a change occurs in particles of a matter, the same changes occur in macroscobic matter.