Examination of conceptual structures of science preservice teachers about metabolic events and energy forms in the cell

In this study, it was aimed to examine the science preservice teachers' conceptual structures about the metabolic events taking place and the forms of energy in a cell. In the study, the descriptive model was used. In the study carried out during the spring semester of the 2017-2018 academic year participated a total of 123 third and fourth year preservice teachers studying at Science Education Division of the Education Faculty of Uludag University. The preservice teachers were asked to write down the metabolic events taking place and the forms of energy in the cell. The documents belonging to the preservice teachers composed the qualitative data of the study. In the data analysis process, since 13 of the preservice teachers did not write any answers, the documents belonging to 110 preservice teachers were taken into evaluation. As a result of the analysis of the documents, a total of 306 answers were obtained, 186 of them were related to the metabolic events and 120 of them were related to the forms of energy. In the data analysis, the content analysis method was used. The data sets belonging to the frequencies and the percentages of the metabolic events and forms of energy specified by the preservice teachers were transformed into tables and graphs. According to the results, a great majority of the preservice teachers' conceptual structures related to the metabolic events were limited to respiration and photosynthesis and those which were related to the energy forms were limited to ATP, light and heat.