Improving the Problems of Writing Chemical Symbols, Formulae and Chemical Equations an Action Research

Abstract

Objective: The researchers interested to assess and improve the general understanding of Generalist Focus Year II students in Nekemte College of Teacher education on chemical symbols, chemical formulae and chemical equations which are the fundamental elements of chemistry for anyone to begin learning this subject. Methods: The study was both qualitative and quantitative type of research, because both numerical and non-numerical data were collected during the study through questionnaire, classroom observation, pre-and post-attitude tests and written tests. As type and source of data, the study used only primary. We used all the population as samples (totally 98 students in both sections) purposely. For the implementation of the action research, we first prepared action plan, applied the interventions, analyzed the changes and reported the results. Results: Based on our null hypothesis, from both attitude tests (questionnaire) and written tests (for both pre-and post-) there is progressive change observed after interventions. From the base line data questionnaire of 15 items, almost 79.5 % of the respondents disagreed for items 1-11 (except item 5) which are assessing the students background on chemical symbols, chemical formulae and chemical equations and very high interest was raised from the students on items 12-15 (highest agreement for both item 12 & 13 by 93.88 % response) which were asking students' interest to learn the basic elements of chemistry languages. After interventions, both post-tests showed correlatively progressive figure in addition to the observations conducted during all interventions. For the attitude test analysis almost, the reverse responses were recorded with agreement response (in average 71.93 %) and for the written test result analysis at p (0.05) the t-statistic is greater than t-critical in all the three cases i.e. chemical symbols, chemical formulae and chemical equations.