Confronting Conceptual Challenges in Thermodynamics by Use of Self-Generated Analogies

Haglund, Jesper; Jeppsson, Fredrik

doi:10.1007/s11191-013-9630-5

Cited by 13 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 69 publications

(114 reference statements)

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“…In their interpretation, seeing entropy as disorder made the students focus exclusively on spatial configuration, but ignore the decrease in internal energy. Similarly, physics teacher students concluded, in small-group exercises, that the entropy of an ideal gas should increase during reversible adiabatic expansion (Haglund & Jeppsson, 2014), while a pair of physical chemistry students arrived at constant entropy, but found it to be counterintuitive (Jeppsson, Haglund, Amin, & Strömdahl, 2013). Furthermore, physics undergraduate students have been found to have difficulties applying the second law of thermodynamics in assessing the feasibility of given thermal processes (Cochran & Heron, 2006), and believe that the entropy of a system and its surroundings typically remains unchanged throughout thermal processes (W. M. Christensen, Meltzer, & Ogilvie, 2009).…”

Section: Students' Conceptions Of Entropymentioning

confidence: 98%

Chemical engineering students' ideas of entropy

Haglund

Andersson

Elmgren

2015

Chem. Educ. Res. Pract.

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Thermodynamics, and in particular entropy, has been found to be challenging for students, not least due to its abstract character. Comparisons with more familiar and concrete domains, by means of analogy and metaphor are commonly used in thermodynamics teaching, in particular the metaphor 'entropy is disorder'. However, this particular metaphor has met major criticism. In the present study, students (N = 73) answered a questionnaire before and after a course on chemical thermodynamics. They were asked to: (1) explain what entropy is; (2) list other scientific concepts that they relate to entropy; (3) after the course, describe how it had influenced their understanding. The disorder metaphor dominated students' responses, although in a more reflective manner after the course. The view of entropy as the freedom for particles to move became more frequent. Most students used particle interaction approaches to entropy, which indicates an association to the chemistry tradition. The chemistry identification was further illustrated by enthalpy and Gibbs free energy being the concepts most often mentioned as connected to entropy. The use of these two terms was particularly pronounced among students at the Chemical Engineering programme. Intriguingly, no correlation was found between the qualitative ideas of entropy and the results of the written exam, primarily focusing on quantitative problem solving. As an educational implication, we recommend that students are introduced to a range of different ways to interpret the complex concept entropy, rather than the use of a single metaphor.

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Section: Students' Conceptions Of Entropymentioning

confidence: 98%

Chemical engineering students' ideas of entropy

Haglund

Andersson

Elmgren

2015

Chem. Educ. Res. Pract.

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“…El uso de la analogía en ciencias es profuso, mostrando como esta promueve la comprensión de la termodinámica (Haglund & Jeppsson, 2013); de modelos mentales sobre átomos (de Almeida, Salvador & Costa, 2014); la comprensión de mecanismos en máquinas simples (Mcdonald, Zembal-Saul & Strauss, 2014); juegan un rol importante en el aprendizaje de los modelos explicativos de los alumnos sobre química (Aragón, Oliva & Navarrete, 2013) y el cambio conceptual (Amin, Smith & Wiser, 2015). Resumiendo, autores como Ferry, Hespos y Gentner (2015) han afirmado que la habilidad analógica es una de las piedras angulares del razonamiento humano pues permite adquirir nueva información a través de la construcción de relaciones categoriales; desde una perspectiva del desarrollo estos autores sugieren que si bien puede encontrase evidencia de un razonamiento analógico pre-verbal, el lenguaje en sí mismo potencia la habilidad analógica.…”

Section: Fundamentos Teóricosunclassified

Argumentar a través de analogías: La emoción en el análisis de una problemática socio-científica

Gutiérrez-Romero

2019

Rev. signos

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The objectives of this article are to analyze the use of analogy as an argumentative form to justify the approval or rejection of agro-mining projects' implementation in territories from a Colombian indigenous community; at the same time, to study the emotional substrate of this argumentative scheme in relation to Christian Plantin's theory of denoted emotion. From a qualitative and interactional perspective, 18 participants (11 women and 7 men aged 17.3 years up to 23.8 years) discussed an oil extraction project. The corpus used in this report was composed of 8 registers with 1,163 word shifts with a combined duration of 121 minutes and 15 seconds from which two specific sequences were chosen. The analyzes give account of how analogy is used unanimously by the students to justify the rejection of mining on indigenous territories. This resource allowed an analysis of the plausible consequences of mining both financial, environmental and cultural. The scheme proposed by Plantin is pertinent to study the use of emotions as adjuvants to the rejection of the dilemma presented as the object of discussion.

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“…This interpretation is supported by the finding that it is common for students to ascribe an entropy increase to a system undergoing adiabatic, reversible expansion, due to the volume increase, and ignore the reduction of the internal energy of the system (Brosseau & Viard, 1992;Haglund & Jeppsson, 2014). The difficulty of carrying out conventional, scientifically sanctioned metaphorical mappings of intuitive, image-schematic structures to abstract scientific concepts has already been noted in the literature (Brookes & Etkina, 2007).…”

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confidence: 90%

Varying Use of Conceptual Metaphors across Levels of Expertise in Thermodynamics

Jeppsson

Haglund

Amin

2015

International Journal of Science Education

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Many studies have previously focused on how people with different levels of expertise solve physics problems. In early work, focus was on characterising differences between experts and novices and a key finding was the central role that propositionally expressed principles and laws play in expert, but not novice, problem solving. A more recent line of research has focused on characterizing continuity between experts and novices at the level of nonpropositional knowledge structures and processes such as image-schemas, imagistic simulation and analogical reasoning. This study contributes to an emerging literature addressing the coordination of both propositional and non-propositional knowledge structures and processes in the development of expertise. Specifically, in this paper we compare problem solving across two levels of expertise -undergraduate students of chemistry and PhD students in physical chemistry -identifying differences in how conceptual metaphors are used (or not) to coordinate propositional and non-propositional knowledge structures in the context of solving problems on entropy. It is hypothesized that the acquisition of expertise involves learning to coordinate the use of conceptual metaphors to interpret propositional (linguistic and mathematical) knowledge and apply it to specific problem situations.Moreover, we suggest that with increasing expertise, the use of conceptual metaphors involves a greater degree of subjective engagement with physical entities and processes.Implications for research on learning and instructional practice are discussed.3

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Confronting Conceptual Challenges in Thermodynamics by Use of Self-Generated Analogies

Cited by 13 publications

References 69 publications

Chemical engineering students' ideas of entropy

Chemical engineering students' ideas of entropy

Argumentar a través de analogías: La emoción en el análisis de una problemática socio-científica

Varying Use of Conceptual Metaphors across Levels of Expertise in Thermodynamics

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