Determination of Science Teacher Candidates’ Misconceptions on Liquid Pressure with Four-Tier Diagnostic Test

One of the most important problems of today’s science education is the misconceptions and lack of knowledge that arise due to the science concepts not being learned in depth and meaningfully. For this reason, in this study, misconceptions, lack of knowledge, and scientific knowledge levels of science teachers about liquid pressure, which is one of the most challenging issues for students, were aimed to reveal using a four-tier misconception diagnostic test. For this purpose, the KR-20 reliability coefficient of the four-tier misconception diagnostic test developed for liquid pressure was calculated as 0.805 according to the scientific knowledge score, and the KR-20 reliability coefficient according to the misconception score was calculated as 0.755. The research data were collected from 481 science teacher candidates studying at six different universities in Turkey. Through the developed misconception test, 24 different misconceptions were revealed, and it was determined that 9 of them existed in 10% or more of science teacher candidates. Research results showed that science teacher candidates’ scientific knowledge about liquid pressure was about 15%, lack of scientific knowledge was about 35%, and misconceptions were about 35%. In the light of this information, it can be suggested to the researchers who want to make descriptive studies that this study, which is carried out on science teacher candidates, can be applied to middle and high school students. Researchers who want to conduct experimental studies may be advised to design experimental studies to overcome the misconceptions that arose in this study.