This research aims to investigate the influence of conceptual change texts on students' understanding and misconceptions related to the subject of alkenes. For this, nine conceptual change texts were developed by considering students' misconceptions and learning difficulties regarding alkenes. The participants of this study consist of 63 second year students from the Primary Science Education Department. From the sample group, 33 students were placed in the experimental group and 30 in the control group. Before and after the study, both groups were given an Alkene Concept Test (ACT).Before instruction, a pre-test was applied to all of the students to determine students' prior knowledge and misconceptions. Afterwards, the experimental group was instructed with conceptual change texts while the control group was instructed with traditional teaching methods. Although the pre-test scores showed no statistically meaningful difference between the students of the two groups, the results of the post-test revealed that the mean scores of the students in the experimental group were significantly higher than those in the control group. In addition, students in the experimental group were better in remediating their misconceptions about alkenes. These findings suggest that conceptual change texts are effective in facilitating students' conceptual understanding of alkenes.

The aim of this study is to determine prospective chemistry teachers' creative comparisons about the basic concepts of inter- and intramolecular forces, and to uncover the relationship between these creative comparisons and prospective teachers' conceptual understanding. Based on a phenomenological research method, this study was conducted with 101 prospective chemistry teachers studying in the Chemistry Education Department at a state university in Turkey in the academic year 2011–2012. The research made use of two data collection instruments, a creative comparison questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. The concepts of “non-polar covalent bonds, dipole–dipole force, hydrogen bonds, ionic bonds, covalent bonds, polar covalent bonds, and van der Waals force” were set out in the creative comparison questionnaire and the prospective teachers were asked to complete the sentences about these concepts (example: ionic bond is like .......... because ...........). Content analysis techniques were employed in the analysis of the creative comparisons set out in the questionnaire. The analysis of the data revealed that the prospective teachers generally developed their creative comparisons based on the formation and strength of the different bonds and that they also had alternative conceptions, particularly regarding the formation of covalent bonds, hydrogen bonds, and the van der Waals force. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in order to learn more about this and obtain detailed information about the level of understanding of the prospective teachers. Twelve prospective teachers were selected for the interviews on the basis of the creative comparisons they had developed in the creative comparison questionnaire. The analysis of the interviews showed that the level of conceptual understanding of the prospective teachers was not tightly linked to the complexity of their creative comparisons. However, it was seen that the creative comparisons submitted by the prospective teachers could be used to infer their conceptual understanding. Also, these creative comparisons could be helpful in determining what the prospective teachers' alternative conceptions were.

In order for students to reach a level of meaningful understanding of chemistry, it is vital that they are able to form accurate relationships between different concepts. In particular, in organic chemistry, identifying intermolecular reactions, considering these reactions as a whole, and defining their results will make important contributions to attaining meaningful understanding. This study aims to explore how pre-service chemistry teachers identify aromatic compound reactions and form associations between them and to discover what kinds of learning difficulties they encounter in forming these associations. In this context, the study, conducted as phenomenographical research, was carried out at a faculty of education in Turkey with 15 pre-service teachers enrolled in the Department of Chemistry Education who had taken the Organic Chemistry 1 and 2 courses. Selected on the basis of purposive sampling, the pre-service chemistry teachers were first asked systemic assessment questions (SAQs) related to aromatic compound reactions. In these questions, the pre-service chemistry teachers were asked to identify 7 molecules in the class of aromatic compounds and complete a diagram by taking into consideration synthesis and reaction conditions. The pre-service chemistry teachers were also asked to indicate two reactions that were not included in the SAQs diagram, together with their reagents and conditions. After completing their responses to the SAQs diagram, individual interviews were held with each of the pre-service chemistry teachers using the think-aloud technique. The research revealed at the end of the quantitative analysis of the data obtained from the SAQs diagram that most of the pre-service chemistry teachers achieved moderate-level scores. At the same time, the qualitative analysis of the data obtained from the SAQs diagram and from the interviews showed that the pre-service chemistry teachers were more successful in identifying and forming associations with the reactions of “nitration” and “sulfonation of aromatic compounds” but had difficulty with the “Friedel–Crafts alkylation,” “oxidation” and “reduction” reactions and with the “bromination of alkenylbenzenes” and the “addition reaction of the double bond of alkenylbenzenes.” Another important finding resulting from this study was that only a few pre-service chemistry teachers were able to identify a new reaction on the SAQs diagram. All of these findings indicate that the pre-service teachers are not very equipped to form meaningful relationships in the context of aromatic compounds, which is one of the basic topics of organic chemistry.

The creative comparisons prospective chemistry teachers make about “chemistry” and the “chemist” may reflect how they perceive these concepts. In this sense, it seems important to determine which creative comparisons prospective teachers make with respect to these and how these can change after the history of chemistry is treated in the classroom. This study seeks to investigate the impact of the basic History and Philosophy of Chemistry course on prospective chemistry teachers’ perceptions towards chemistry and the chemist. The study was conducted during the 2012–2013 academic year at a state university in Turkey with 38 prospective chemistry teachers. A creative comparisons questionnaire and semi-structured interviews were used as data collection instruments in the study. This questionnaire was administered to the prospective teachers in the form of a pre-test, post-test, and retention test. Results of the analysis showed that the prospective teachers produced creative comparisons related to chemistry in the pre-test that mostly relied on their own experiences and observations, but that in the post-test and retention test, their comparisons mostly contained references to the role of chemistry in daily life, its development, and its facilitating aspects. Similarly, it was observed that in the pre-test, the prospective teachers made creative comparisons regarding the chemist that related mostly to the laboratory, but that the post-test and retention test rather contained the aspects of chemists as researchers, meticulous persons, facilitators and managers. Also, 18 prospective teachers were engaged in interviews to understand their prior knowledge about chemistry and the chemist, as well as the reasons for the changes in their creative comparisons. The results of the interviews indicated that a large majority of the prospective teachers were able to fully reflect on their inadequacy about their previous knowledge about “chemistry” and “chemist,” and it was seen that they could explain the reason they changed their creative comparisons as an outcome of the History and Philosophy of Chemistry course. In the light of these results, it can be said that the History and Philosophy of Chemistry course may help prospective chemistry teachers in their perceptions about both chemistry and the chemist and may add depth to their knowledge.