Evaluating the Success of Hispanic-Surname Students in First-Semester General Chemistry

Abstract

This study was undertaken to identify methods and variables that affect classroom instruction, student achievement, and retention in a first-semester general chemistry course at a designated minority (primarily Hispanic) public institution of higher education. The course was a large-group lecture class (n = 241) of first-semester general chemistry that included 92 students with Hispanic surnames. Background information was gathered on the students' university-required entrance examinations, results from a logical thinking ability test, and scores from an instructor-developed diagnostic pretest. Ethnicity and gender data were collected and evaluated for trends that might affect students' success in chemistry achievement. Sixteen (17 percent) of the Hispanic-surname students enrolled in this class participated in a one-hour-per-week recitation session. The data indicate that university mathematics level is a strong predictor of success regardless of ethnicity, gender, or pre-course achievement variables, and participation in recitation sessions also improved course averages for all student groups. Included in the final analysis of this study are the benefits that can be attributed to good counseling.See Correction to this article.

Factors Contributing to the Success of Undergraduate Business Students in Management Science Courses

“…His analyses showed a strong correlation between SAT math score and general chemistry grades, with no significant differences in any of the subsets except for chemistry/biochemistry majors whose grades were underpredicted. More recently, Mason and Mittag (2001) reported on a study of Hispanic‐surnamed students in first‐semester general chemistry, and gave evidence that mathematical experience, measured by the highest level of mathematics completed, was the strongest predictor of success for all students in the class.…”

Importance of Academic Legacy on Student Success in First- and Second-Semester General Chemistry

“…The unexpected higher correlation when calculators were not used led the NSA team to further investigations. As is well-documented, Chem 1 to Chem 2 courses report historically high DFW rates (students who make grades of D or F or withdraw from a course) (Martin, 1942;Hovey & Krohn, 1958;Rowe, 1983;McFate & Olmsted, 1999;Legg, Greenbowe, & Legg, 2001;Mason & Mittag, 2001;Wagner, Sasser & DiBiase, 2002;Reardon et al, 2010;Ford, Broadway, & Mason, 2023). The diagnostic used in this study goes beyond arithmetic skills.…”

Using social influence models to characterize student interest in a general chemistry peer-led team learning setting

“…After understanding the baseline for all students, we then looked at our groups of interest. There were three comparisons that we chose to explore based on our concerns with potential inequities and the availability of enough data to make a meaningful comparison: (1) transfer students (Wesemann, 2005;Stitzel and Raje, 2021), (2) female students (Liu et al, 2017), and (3) Hispanic students (Mason and Mittag, 2001). As for the comparisons between time points, we focused the comparisons for these groups based on effect size instead of simple significance testing as simply commenting on significance can either lead us to focus on trivial differences that simply meet a threshold of statistical significance or ignore large differences that simply did not meet a threshold of statistical significance.…”

“…For example, it has been reported that female students typically have lower motivation than their peers in general chemistry (Liu et al, 2017). Additionally, there are reports showing how motivation is correlated to early college academic success among Hispanic students (Kaufman et al, 2008) while other reports demonstrate Hispanic students pass general chemistry at a rate lower than their peers (Mason and Mittag, 2001). When considering how students interact with each other in a PLTL setting, it is valuable to know how these differences are either increased, maintained, or decreased as a result of social influence in order to better plan activities to promote student learning and motivation.…”