An overview on prospective chemistry teachers' graph reading, interpreting and drawing skills concerning the subjects of general chemistry

This study aims to observe the difficulties that prospective chemistry teachers face with regard to graph reading, interpreting and drawing skills, as well as determining the level of their skills. A case study survey model from descriptive models was utilezed in the study. In the scope of this model, the two-staged general chemistry graph reading, interpreting and drawing skills test (GKGOYÇBT), and the semi-structured interview technique as the data collection tool were used. As a result of the pilot study, the realibility index of test, which consists of 33 questions was calculated as KR-20 = 0.86. After the pilot study, a second stage was added to each question in the test to express the difficulties that prospective teachers face while solving the questions. To construct the second stage, a revised edition of the Bloom taxonomy's cognitive process was utilized. GKGOYÇBT that was transformed into a two-staged test was applied to 21 prospective chemistry teachers. In the light of the data obtained from the test, semi-structured interviews were conducted on 15 volunteer prospective teachers with the aim of examinining the difficulties encountered by the volunteers in the graph reading, interpreting and drawing skills test. At the end of the study, according to the data obtained from the test and semi-structured interviews, it was found out that the prospective teachers' reading, interpreting and drawing skill levels were insufficient (less than 50%) and that they experienced some diifficulties in using this skills. Moreover, it was concluded that prospective teachers' graph drawing skill levels (36.51%) were lower than their graph reading, and interpreting skill levels were (47.95%). Additionally, it was observed that they were more succesful in performing interpolation than extrapolation, and that yet, they had some misconceptions in eeach skills. In the semi-structured interviews were the difficulties that prospective teachers experienced were studied in detail, it was ascertained that they did not have satisfactory graphic using skills in the process of their pre-university education. As a consequence of the obtained results, relevant recommendations that indicate methods to develop graphical skills were presented.