Teachers' perceptions of the teaching of acids and bases in Swedish upper secondary schools

Abstract

We report in this paper on a study of chemistry teachers' perceptions of their teaching in upper secondary schools in Sweden, regarding models of acids and bases, especially the Brønsted and the Arrhenius model. A questionnaire consisting of a Likert-type scale was developed, which focused on teachers' knowledge of different models, knowledge of students' difficulties, and use of textbooks in their teaching of acids and bases. The questionnaire was sent to 441 upper secondary schools in Sweden and a total of 281 teachers answered it; through a cluster analysis they were divided into three subgroups. From each subgroup, two teachers were interviewed in order to enrich the data. The results in..