Monica Prima Sari, Rahmah Evita Putri
Understanding the nature of particle is essential for science student teachers since it provides fundamental basic for teaching about atom, ion, and molecule for secondary school science subjects. Furthermore, this understanding also essential to generate sufficient scientific explanation about observed natural phenomena, especially those related to secondary school science lesson. However, teaching experiences revealed that most science student teacher found it difficult to build an appropriate understanding on concepts of atoms, and established connections among concepts to generate sound explanations of relevant phenomena. Therefore, we would like to investigate their prior knowledge before taking the course of Basic Inorganic Chemistry in the Department of Science Education of Universitas Negeri Padang. A set of open-ended questions was prepared and validated beforehand which required students to provide explanation about atom and its particle, the nature of atom, orbital, configuration of electron, atomic mass-symbol-number, and periodical properties of elements. Students' responses to these questions were analyzed qualitatively which involves coding and categorization process to generated themes, relations, and scores. Our finding indicates that most students preferred to define atoms based on the earlier models and theories of atom rather than the latest theory, still made mistake in writing configuration of electron either based on Bohr's configuration or quantum mechanics theory, and failed in making connection between observed periodical properties of element and the nature of its respective atoms. Further suggestions and recommendations to improve the learning process to promote better understanding are discussed. © 2023 Author(s).
Department of Science Education, Faculty of Mathematics and Science, Universitas Negeri Padang, Padang, Indonesia
