Pre-Service Chemistry Teachers’ Ideas about Reaction Mechanism

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine Turkish pre-service chemistry teachers’ (N=49) conceptions about the reaction mechanisms for given situations. Participants’ ideas were elicited through the open-ended questions and the semi-structured interviews related to the reaction mechanism. Several conceptual difficulties were exhibited by pre-service chemistry teachers. The outcomes of the study revealed that some of the prospective teachers were not aware that slow step of a reaction mechanism is the rate determining step. They also tried to explain the effect of concentration on the reaction rate by means of Le Chatelier’s principle. It was also found that prospective chemistry teachers had difficulties in writing the mechanism of a reaction from a given potential energy curve. In addition to these, most of the participants could not differentiate between activated complex and reaction intermediate by using the energy values of the substances in a given graph.