The development of prospective teachers' concerns about teaching chemistry topics at a macro-micro-symbolic interface

This paper describes an exploratory study of prospective teachers' concerns about teaching a major topic in science education, i.e., linking macroscopic phenomena with microscopic particles and symbolic representations such as formulas and equations. Teaching this topic is often associated with conceptual difficulties for students and, for that reason, may evoke pedagogical content concerns (PCC) among prospective teachers. The study was designed as a naturalistic case-study. Eight prospective teachers (all had a MSc in chemistry) were interviewed before and after the first two lessons about topics focussing on a macro-micro-symbolic interface. The semi-structured interviews and the lessons were audio-taped and analysed. The results revealed a number of characteristics of the nature of the development of prospective science teachers' PCC.