Examining Some of the Challenges Students Face in Learning about Solubility and the Dissolution Process

Abstract

Developing conceptual understanding of solubility and dissolution and the relationship to molecular structure, ionic salts' charges, and enthalpy and entropy, play a significant role in the learning of chemistry. Dissolution and solubility are topics covered in general chemistry, quantitative analysis, biology, and organic chemistry. Alternative conceptions about some of the key chemistry principles can lead to students' failure in understanding and accepting some of the future concepts. This study aims to examine some of the challenges and alternate conceptions that students face when learning about solubility and its relationship to Lewis structures and the driving force behind dissolution. A survey that consisted of ionic and molecular solubility related problems, short answers, and Likert-Type questions was given to 200 students in order to analyze their understanding of solubility, dissolution, alternate conceptions they possess, challenges they face in learning about the topics, and its relationship to Lewis dot structures and ionic charges. Our data indicates that students struggle with solving solubility and dissolution process related problems and rely on memorization to approach these problems. For ionic compounds, there seems to be a dependency on memorization and rote-learning of solubility rules instead of development of conceptual understanding of charges of ions and their relationship to entropy and enthalpy in the dissolution process. For molecular compounds, it should be noted that students lack mastery of determining molecular shape and its relationship to function but do emphasize the roles of Lewis structure and polarity in solubility. Finally, students do not attribute the combined effects of enthalpy and entropy as the driving forces behind dissolution and show very fragmented and naïve understanding of the concept.

Learners’ issues in the preparation and qualitative analysis of salts topics in chemistry: Teachers’ perspectives

“…Furthermore, Tan (2005) emphasized that excessive memory work in learning salts topics could trigger cognitive overloading and affect students' learning. Therefore, teachers need to look for strategies to help students systematically remember the facts not only to score in the examination but to ease students' memory work and create an enjoyable learning environment for them (Izzati & Rochmah, 2020;Osman & Lay, 2020;Salame & Nikolic, 2021). For example, some informants of this study use acronyms or mnemonic methods in their classrooms to reduce students' cognitive load and increase their memory retention of the topics.…”

“…However, the practice only benefits the students if the teachers critically look at the assessment data and reflect on the improvement they could make in teaching to provide students with the necessary assistance (Salleh et al, 2022b). Besides, based on data from the assessment practice, teachers could re-visit essential concepts related to the topics, strengthening students' understanding and allowing them to correct misconceptions or alternative conceptions that the students have before learning the salts topics in-depth (Elham & Dilmaghani, 2019;Salame & Nikolic, 2021). Furthermore, the practice allows teachers to devise a differentiated instructional plan for various groups of students by selecting suitable approaches and learning materials tailored to students' existing needs in learning the topics (Salleh et al, 2022a).…”

“…In tandem, such proclamation can be found in a study by Doraiseriyan and Damanhuri (2021), which discussed the tendency of students to practice rote learning and remember facts without understanding the abstract concepts in salts topic. Other studies revealed that unfamiliarity with the chemistry concepts in salts topics had led them to memorize chemical concepts in the description of the word but unable to fathom and explain the memorized words (Izzati & Rochmah, 2020;Salame & Nikolic, 2021;Wisudawati et al, 2022).…”

“…Studying through rote learning is not the sole issue here; a study by Ting (2016) also found that Malaysian students' mastery level of basic chemistry concepts is considered low, specifically in concepts of salts. With such a loose foundation, past studies asserted that students are prone to hold alternative notions and misconceptions related to basic concepts that manifest more difficulties in learning the subsequent topics that integrate the knowledge in understanding more complex concepts or solving problems (Elham & Dilmaghani, 2019;Salame & Nikolic, 2021;Ting, 2016). In the context of preparation and qualitative analysis of salts, it is evident that students not only struggle to learn the basics topics, but they also found to have misconceptions about the reaction of acids and bases (Damanhuri et al, 2016), ionic and covalent substances (Stojanovska et al, 2017), the concept of salts' solubility (Eisen et al, 2014;Izzati & Rochmah, 2020;Salame & Nikolic, 2021) and salts hydrolysis (Prianti et al, 2020;Shidiq et al, 2019) to name a few.…”

Video in Education From ‘Sage on the Stage’ to ‘TV Talk Show Host’: Where to Next?

“…The professor is sharing their knowledge with the students and as Alison puts it, 'filling the minds of the passive empty vessels (p. 30)'. This article has been used by a string of authors since then (see for instance Chung, 2005;Inan, 2021;Kalugina et al, 2018;Louis-Jean & Cenat, 2020;McWilliam, 2009;Morrison, 2014;Privalova et al, 2019Privalova et al, , 2020Salame & Nikolic, 2021;Sudakova et al, 2017) advocating for more active approaches to enable learning arguing that the face-to-face time, the time being used for traditional lectures should be used for interactive and active learning experiences. They say the lecture should be replaced by resources, to be read or watched in students' 2 / 6 own time, and this is where the exploration of video begins.…”