Developing chemistry teachers skills for designing and implementing context based activities

The focus of this study to develop the competence of chemistry teachers in designing and applying context based activities. With this in mind, there was a aim on determining the expectations of teachers from the process, professional-individual gains as a result of context based chemistry teaching, views about the practicality of context based chemistry teaching and the impact of feedback provided at the end of the practices on teachers' context based chemistry teaching competences. In the study, as being one of qualitative approaches, collective case study design was employed. The study was carried out with two chemistry teachers who participated in an in-service context based chemistry teaching program that was performed by the researcher. The data of the study were collected through observations, interviews and field notes. The collected data were analysed through employing both descriptive analysis and content analysis. As the result of the study, it was figured out that Teacher A did show an improvement in five context based teaching competences; whereas, Teacher B showed an improvement in two context based teaching competences. Additionally, the factors that might affect the process were investigated under the categories such as teacher profile and students' characteristics; teachers' expectations were investigated under the categories of expectations from students and teaching process; gains attained at the end of the process were investigated in accordance with professional and individual gains; the practicality of context based teaching were investigated under the categories of curriculum, context and educational policies. Keywords: context based chemistry teaching; context based teaching competences; teachers; feedback.