A Study of Pre-Service Science Teacher's Graphing Skills

Abstract

Teaching students how to read, to interpret and to construct graphs is a substantial educational object and it is also concluded that the students who can read graphs acquire additional capabilities, which will become more useful in science education. In the present study, it is aimed to investigate pre-service science teachers' graphing skills and to determine their difficulties in reading and interpreting graphs. The study was carried out with 128 pre-service science teachers. Multiple-choice test items and open-ended questions were used to evaluate graphing skills of pre-service teachers. As a general result of study graph reading and interpretation skills of pre-service teachers are inadequate and also their graphing performances vary depending on the type of graph. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Huseyin Uzunboylu