Pre-service science teachers’ understanding and level of comprehension of chemistry equations

In this study, it is aimed to give a deep insight into the teacher candidates’ understanding of the general concept of “equation” and what those equations that science teacher candidates learn in chemistry classes or face with when they try to have a better understanding of a difficult topic mean to them. Six open-ended questions directed at the teacher candidates in this study were applied under four different headings. The descriptive analysis method, which is one of the qualitative research methods, was used to search for answers to research questions in the study. The study was conducted with a total of 50 first-year science teachers who were educated at the Uludag University Faculty of Education during the fall semester of the 2017-2018 academic year. When the obtained data are evaluated, it has been determined that most of the teacher candidates have insufficiency about making scientific definitions of the given equations, explaining the relationship between the quantities in the chemical equations and expressing the equations mathematically. One of the most striking results is that although students tried to give examples from everyday life appropriate to the equations, none of the students was successful in finding an analog