An initial sample of 94 students enrolled in a first-term general chemistry course was tested with paired algorithmic–conceptual questions, which included questions first used by Nurrenbern and Pickering. The topics of these questions were density, stoichiometry, gas laws, and molarity. Scientific reasoning skill was measured with the Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning. The skills assessed by this instrument are conservation of weight, conservation of displaced volume, proportional thinking, identification and control of variables, probabilistic thinking, correlational thinking, and hypothetico-deductive reasoning. Results showed that success on algorithmic questions was always higher than on conceptual questions, verifying the results of previous studies. Additionally, the students with better reasoning ability outperformed students with poorer reasoning ability on all question types, and the scores of the better reasoners were significantly higher than those of the poorer reasoners on three of the four conceptual questions administered, as well as on the ACS final examination. The results indicate that variation in scientific reasoning skills is one cause of the gap between algorithmic and conceptual problem-solving ability.

More than vegetables—proportional reasoning skills and an understanding of sophisticated statistical concepts—can grow from a backyard plot.

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We critically examine the use of menswear in literature and film as an expression of Weltanschauung, a view of the world by creatives in the literary and visual arts. While depictions and presentations of menswear serve as rhetorical devices in literature and film, this occurs within a sociocultural meaning system, where the creator not only captures elements of social realities but also serves to influence them. Our enquiry informs how taste is defined through the distinctions made in social processes involving cultural capital through creative production. This involves context-rich analyses of how menswear is used to craft identities and tropes embedded within a historicized imaginary that may have never even existed. Such an examination of menswear as an art form in media allows for a nuanced critical analysis of gender performativity and issues of trajectories of meanings over time. Our theoretical framework builds on the fashion system and cultural reproduction work of Roland Barthes and Pierre Bourdieu, respectively. We use several key case studies of twentieth-century authors and film projects to develop new theory that has implications for understanding menswear as an art form with societal significance, with implications for better understanding gender, identity, culture and the everyday praxis of individuals and institutions.