In this study, first the level of interconnectedness of the key concepts concerning the topic of physical and chemical changes in pre-service chemistry teachers' (PSCTs') semantic memories was explored. Second, the group cognitive structures of the PSCTs that contain associations between these key concepts and the response concepts that appeared…

Background: We adopted a theoretical framework that the acquisition of a scientific concept comprises the development of connections among conceptual elements associated with a scientific term within a mental semantic network. Given this framework, the hypothesis that the surrounding words connected with a scientific term are relevant to the…

Data on the semantic proximity of classical mechanics concepts, obtained by means of a cross-sectional investigation (100 subjects) using a continued word association test, were analyzed by individual difference multidimensional scaling to permit the mapping of semantic space for individual subjects. (JC)