How do pre-service chemistry teachers rate the importance of content in organic chemistry during their chemistry studies at university?

The questionnaire used in this study

For the rating of the students a questionnaire was developed. It consists of three parts: a rating whether contents are very important for future teachers, the rating whether concepts are very important for future teachers and an open question: which content and concepts are missing? For the evaluation of the first two parts a four-item Likert scale was used (Likert, 1932). The students could select either “strongly disagree”, “disagree”, “agree” or “strongly agree”, using the forced-choice method by removing the neutral option (“neither agree nor disagree”) (Allen & Seaman, 2007). Table 1 shows the contents and the concepts of the questionnaire.

The ratings were evaluated by using the program SPSS and the results of the open question were clustered and summarized according to Kuckartz (2016). The excerpts used for this paper were translated from German to English.

Research question: how do pre-service teachers rate the contents and concepts in organic chemistry with regard to the school curriculum in the federal state of Brandenburg during their bachelor or master courses on organic chemistry?

To answer this research question, an overview of the contents at school was analysed by using the summary in the publication of Hermanns and Keller (2019). A Mann-Whitney-Test was conducted and effect sizes were calculated for the statistically significant results (p = 0.010–0.051). The arithmetic mean and standard deviation for the students’ ratings as well as the effect size r (Pearson’s correlation) are given in Table 2. The contents that are not part of the curriculum in Brandenburg are in bold.

The following discussion will first focus on the statistically relevant results. The second part will also discuss those results that are not statistically relevant, because these results can be of interest for practitioners who teach organic chemistry or who are involved in teacher education.

Statistically relevant are the results of the rating of the topics aldehydes, carboxylic acids and alkenes and of the particle concept of matter and the concept of structure-property relationships. The master students’ ratings of the contents are better than the bachelor students’ rating (p = 0.010, 0.02 and 0.240; r = 0.215, 0.178 and 0.131). In addition, especially those concepts that are important at school are rated better by the master students: the concepts “particle concept of matter” and “structure-property relationships” are rated with 3.47 (bachelor) and 3.79 (master) and therefore between “agree” and “strongly agree”. The master students rate these concepts significantly better (p = 0.045 and 0.033; r = 0.138 and 0.156). If we take into account that the students rate content that they know from their own school days as more relevant (Hermanns, 2020), the better rating by the master students can be explained on the one hand by their internships at school. They don’t have to rely solely on what they remember from their own school days, but they also have new experience which content is important at school as a result of their own teaching during their internships. However, the assumption that the internships influence the master students’ rating is supported by their rating of the concepts.

Most results from the questionnaires are not statistically relevant. However, those results will also be discussed, beginning with the contents that are not part of the curriculum in our federal state. For those contents, the arithmetic mean is 2.72 for the rating by the bachelor students and 2.91 for the master students. The difference in the rating is relatively small. It can be possible that the master students recognize the importance of content that is not part of the school curriculum, because they considere such content as an additional learning opportunity or it is their opinion that teachers also have to know content that is not a part of the curriculum. The contents chelates (2.09) and ketones (2.82) were also rated as being less important for their chemistry studies, although the rating of the content ketones with an arithmetic mean of 2.82 is near “agree”. Although those two topics are at some point part of the school curriculum, it is possible that the students did not have them at their school. Differences between schools of the same federal state can be observed (Hermanns et al., 2019).

As all contents in the questionnaire are part of at least one school curriculum, the students should rate all contents as important for their future profession. They seem to focus on becoming a teacher in the federal state where they first went to school and now go to university.

However, the other content (that are part of our school curriculum) is rated better by both groups. The arithmetic means for the other content are 3.33 (“agree”) for the bachelor students and 3.53 (“strongly agree”) for the master students. Noticeable in this context is the master students’ rating of the topics alkanes and alcohols, which are part of the school curriculum for pupils between 15 and 16 years. Those topics are rated with 4.00 (very important). If they taught those topics during their internships this would explain this very good rating. On the other hand, it can be possible that the master students rate content better because they know the significance of content for gaining PCK (the master students also had already more courses on PCK than the bachelor students) or have the opinion that a teacher has to know more, as stated before. The concept “reaction mechanisms in organic chemistry” is rated with 2.76 (bachelor) and 3.16 (master) less well than the other concepts. The rating by the bachelor students lies between “not agree” and “agree” and cannot be seen as sufficient. In our opinion, this concept is crucial for learning organic chemistry and should therefore, regardless of the importance at school, be rated better by the students. This concept is unfortunately used relatively seldom at school, which would explain this rating. However, the master students rate this concept better than the bachelor students (arithmetic mean = 3.16 vs. 2.76), but also not that well. One reason for this could be how reaction mechanisms are taught in a traditional curriculum: the mechanisms are mostly presented as a whole. The initiation of conceptual knowledge to construct reaction mechanisms is seldom a goal of the lecture. The new lecture “Organic Chemistry I”, which will start in winter 2020, will focus on the initiation of conceptual knowledge. It will be very interesting whether the students then rate these concepts differently.

At the end of the questionnaire the open item “The following contents/concepts are missing in my opinion” was answered by the students. The bachelor students did not voice their opinions at all. One reason can be that they are at the beginning of their study and do not yet have an overview which contents and concepts could be important for their teaching at school. This would support the assumption that the internships at school have an influence on the students’ rating. A summary of the opinions by the master students is presented in Table 3:

Unfortunately only four master students used the opportunity to give opinions for contents and concepts. However, the opinion from the student who wanted a more in-depth treatment of the concepts “particle concept of matter” and “structure-property relationships” is interesting, because the master students rated these concepts overall as very important.