Starting the Educational Reform from the Beginning: Croatian Pre-Service Chemistry Teachers’ Level of Pedagogical Content Knowledge on Particle Theory

Abstract

Changes in the educational system need strong support from and connection to teachers. For this, knowledge about teachers is needed. A key factor in changing the chemistry classroom reality are teachers—in-service and pre-service. Chemistry Education Research is a new domain in Croatia. Since the transfer of the data from various undertaken studies on teachers’ knowledge is not easy based on differences in educational systems, research in the Croatian context is needed. Particle Theory is one of the main topics and the basis of chemistry teaching and learning. This study is based on open-ended questions following the frame of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and Big Ideas about Particle Theory by Loughran. Data analysis follows the pattern of graduating the PCK of the participants at the novice, intermediate or advanced level. The results show that pre-service chemistry teachers’ PCK is either novice or intermediate on the national level, while the results for particular universities show some differences in chemistry pre-service teachers’ PCK. Thus, the study can be an excellent starting point for chemistry teacher educators in university for further development of pre-service teachers’ PCK.