This research was aimed to analyse the current state in primary and secondary schools in the Republic of Serbia, regarding chemistry teachers? initial education and self-perceived competencies. As an ...instrument, a questionnaire of 20 questions was used, which was prepared in the form of a Google questionnaire. The questions were divided into five groups to examine data on the structure of chemistry teachers (gender, age, place and school where they teach), the level of education obtained and the method of acquisition and acquired competencies, and finally the personal opinion of chemistry teachers about the teaching profession, advantages, disadvantages and possible recommendations to his/her students in terms of choosing this profession as a possible career. The questionnaire was sent to 1537 schools and 497 chemistry teachers took part in the questionnaire. The results showed that chemistry teachers are predominantly women, mostly aged 36?55, full-time employed and with an average working experience of over 11 years. Most teachers have appropriate education and acquired competencies. They cite working with children as the biggest advantage of the teaching profession while as the biggest disadvantage, they report a constant increase in the amount of administration from year to year.
The teachers should support students in acquiring knowledge and developing skills thus preparing them to think and learn independently. Considering this, the significance of implementing the modified ...Know-Want-Learn (KWL) teaching strategy, which directs students to perform metacognitive activities, becomes more evident. Quasi-experimental research was used to investigate the correlation between elementary school students’ physics performance and metacognition regarding the use of a modified KWL strategy. The study included an experimental and control group and a pre-test and post-test research method. Two physics knowledge tests and a questionnaire on metacognition were distributed to the 110 sixth-grade students in the elementary school. Results indicated that statistically significant correlation existed between students’ performance in physics and metacognition when the traditional teaching method was used. At the same time, there was no statistically significant correlation when a modified KWL strategy was used. It can be indicated that, while addressing the problem of poor students’ performance, an improvement can be seen in case of the metacognition.
The aim of this research was the creation and validation of a procedure for determining the cognitive complexity of problem tasks in the field of salt hydrolysis. The procedure created included an ...assessment of the difficulty of concepts and an assessment of their interactivity. One of the research tasks was to determine whether there were misconceptions by students that might have influenced their achievement. There were 50 Bachelor of Science in Chemistry students who participated in the study. A knowledge test was used as a research instrument to assess the performance and a seven-point Likert scale to evaluate the invested mental effort. The validity of this instrument for the assessment of cognitive complexity was confirmed by a series of regression analyses, where acceptable and statistically significant correlation coefficients were obtained among the examined variables: student performance and invested mental effort as dependent variables and cognitive complexity as independent variable
The differences related to gender are evident in physics education from the early age of the students. Thus, it is important that the teaching strategies that are implemented in mixed-gender physics ...classrooms are appropriate for both boys and girls. This research examined physics achievement and metacognitive awareness of students in lower secondary education in relation to gender when the modified Know-Want-Learn (mKWL) strategy is implemented. During the study, the students were divided into the control group (where direct teaching was implemented) and the experimental group (where the mKWL strategy was implemented in physics teaching). Students’ physics achievement (estimated with knowledge tests) and metacognitive awareness (estimated with a questionnaire) before and after the pedagogical experiment, and also the students’ comments on the mKWL strategy (provided through an informal conversation) were analyzed. It was shown that the students’ achievement did not differ in relation to gender while girls showed higher metacognitive awareness in comparison with boys, and the mKWL strategy increased physics achievement and metacognitive awareness of both boys and girls. Furthermore, the students’ comments on the strategy were discussed. The proposed strategy is shown to be appropriate for both genders, and its implementation in physics classrooms can be recommended.
The main problem in students' lower achievement lies in the cognitive complexity of the problem. The aim of this research was to create and validate the procedure for the assessment of the cognitive ...complexity of chemical technology problem tasks. The procedure included the creation of Tables for assessing the difficulty of concepts in chemical technology problems and their interactivity, assessment of the numerical rating of cognitive complexity of the analyzed tasks, and conducting of research. Research included 50 students. Data were collected with the test of knowledge which was used for the assessment of students´ achievements and invested mental effort. The validity of this procedure was confirmed by a series of correlation analyses where statistically significant values of correlation coefficients were obtained among the examined variables: students’ achievements, invested mental effort and cognitive complexity. The largest contribution of this procedure is that it is designed to show an objective value of the cognitive complexity of tasks in the domain of chemical technology. Good estimation of the numerical values of cognitive complexity can help teachers to better predict students' achievement, and at the same time to take care to avoid cognitive load.
This research considered students’ abilities to read images about dispersed systems, taken from the chemistry textbook. 103 high school students (37 males, 63 females, and 3 unknown) from the school ...“Svetozar Marković“ in Novi Sad, Republic of Serbia, were included as the research participants. Students’ abilities to suggest the titles of the realistic, conventional, and hybrid textbook images about dispersed systems, as well as their written interpretations of images contents, were examined. The collected data were analysed qualitatively, and information about students’ conceptual understandings and misunderstandings about selected chemistry topic was provided. Identified misunderstandings, some of which are the contribution of this research, gave significant results. Additionally, it was concluded that the majority of students’ difficulties were related to reading realistic textbook images. Students relied on what they literally saw in the photography without making proper connections with chemical contents about dispersed systems. The findings of the present research could be helpful for science teachers and educators, interested in how and why students use textbook images to learn science concepts. They will also alert authors and textbook illustrators to pay more attention to the selection of appropriate textbook images.
The present study is focused on the examination of language accuracy of future chemistry teachers in the macro-submicro-symbolic domain. Since the knowledge at the submicroscopic level is crucial for ...the understanding of chemical concepts and ideas, the aim of this study was to examine the accuracy of the language of future chemistry teachers while delivering chemical contents at this level. Within this objective, it was examined whether future chemistry teachers make a distinction between submicroscopic and macroscopic levels, as well as between submicroscopic and symbolic levels in their speech. Using qualitative methods of analysis, it was found that the majority of surveyed future chemistry teachers did not have the expected and necessary language accuracy within the examined domain. Most worrying were the attitudes of future chemistry teachers, who perceived the accurate expressions in the macro-submicro-symbolic domain as a redundant complication rather than a necessity.
To make it easier for students to learn the contents of physics and increase their motivation to learn, physics teachers need to apply different teaching strategies. With this study we aimed to ...examine the impact of the modified Know-Want-Learn (mKWL) strategy in physics teaching on elementary school students’ metacognition. The pedagogical experiment with parallel groups was applied to determine whether the mKWL strategy affected students’ metacognition. The students in the experimental group were taught by applying the mKWL strategy with a specific chart. The chart consisted of columns: T – What I think and what I know, Q – What questions I have, H – How can I find out, L – What I Learned (TQHL chart). The students in the control group were taught (the same physics curriculum) by using the traditional teaching model, without this TQHL chart. A questionnaire on metacognition was used for the evaluation of sixth-grade students’ metacognition. The statistical analysis of data included descriptive statistics, as well as paired sample t-tests and independent sample t-tests. Research results, based on the scores obtained using the questionnaire on metacognition, imply that the use of the proposed mKWL strategy increases students’ metacognition. Considering the positive effect of this teaching strategy on students’ metacognition, its further application in other teaching subjects is planned as well as the training of a large number of elementary school teachers for its application.
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