Developing Chemical Understanding in the Explanatory Vacuum: Swedish High School Students’ Use of an Anthropomorphic Conceptual Framework to Make Sense of Chemical Phenomena

Developing an Understanding of Chemistry: A case study of one Swedish student's rich conceptualisation for making sense of upper secondary school chemistry

“…We have previously suggested that limited prescription of curriculum in compulsory Swedish school science leads to students often beginning high school study of chemistry without suitable pre-requisite knowledge (Adbo & Taber, 2009;Taber & Adbo, 2013). This may encourage the kind of teaching Jesper experienced in upper secondary school: closely following a textbook presentation and with a strong emphasis on reinforcement of basic definitions and the meanings of symbolic representations.…”

“…One key finding from this phase of the project was that most of these students relied heavily on anthropomorphic explanations when asked about the states of matter, phase changes and chemical reactions (Taber & Adbo, 2013). The present paper reports a case study deriving from this phase of the project, focusing on the ideas of one student, referred to as Jesper, and how these developed during one year of academic study.…”

“…They referred to how atoms wanted, needed, strived, felt, were content, tried, thought, liked, searched, tricked, and sent: terms suggesting the agency of individual atoms (Taber & Adbo, 2013). It is a basic feature of human cognition from quite early in life to expect observed changes to be the outcome of agents acting in the world (Carey, 2009), and perceiving the world in this way has been considered to underpin a range of common alternative conceptions (Andersson, 1986).…”

“…Jesper offered both very detailed data and evidence of rich conceptualisation at the start of the study providing a useful baseline for exploring his developing thinking. Unlike the other participants in the study, his explanations did not substantially rely upon anthropomorphic thinking (Taber & Adbo, 2013). Jesper was therefore not selected to be representative of the group, but rather because his case offered a strong evidence base in relation to our research question (RQ).…”

Teaching of chemical bonding: a study of Swedish and South African students' conceptions of bonding

“…We are not aware that any large-scale investigation into students' ideas of chemical bonding has been carried out with Swedish upper secondary school chemistry students. An in-depth study of a group of students at a specific Swedish upper secondary school understanding of matter and phase changes was published recently (Taber and Adbo, 2013). While some data has been collected about South African secondary students level of preparedness for tertiary studies (Potgieter and Davidowitz, 2011), there has been no in depth investigation of their ideas on chemical bonding.…”