PROSPECTIVE TEACHERS’ COGNITIVE STRUCTURES CONCERNING PROTEIN SYNTHESIS AND THEIR DEGREE OF UNDERSTANDING

The purpose of education is to actualise meaningful learning. Therefore, researching the issues on how students process information and how they configure it is important for meaningful learning. The issue of protein synthesis contains a number of abstract topics and concepts. Hence, it is important in biology teaching to be informed of students' cognitive structures concerning protein synthesis. This research aims to analyse prospective teachers' cognitive structures about protein synthesis and their degree of understanding the subject. The research group was composed of 17 volunteering prospective teachers who had been chosen through purposeful sampling. The data were collected via semi-structured interviews. Flow maps and content analysis were used in analysing the data. The results demonstrated that prospective teachers had too many misconceptions about protein synthesis and that their knowledge extent and rich connection are inadequate. The prospective teachers' degree of understanding protein synthesis was divided into three categories. The results obtained in this research suggested that teachers should be careful in teaching the subject of protein synthesis. Students' prior knowledge and their misconceptions should be determined and content or contexts to facilitate them to learn an abstract subject such as protein synthesis should be presented.