Exploring Students’ Explanations of Energy Transfer and Transformation

Abstract

The ability to build mechanistic explanations of natural phenomena is highly valued in all scientific disciplines, including chemistry. In this paper, we summarize the results of a qualitative study designed to characterize the nature of the mechanistic explanations built by college General Chemistry students when analyzing a physical process involving energy transfer between parts of a system at different temperatures, and a chemical process involving energy transformation and transfer due to chemical bonding. Prior studies have mostly focused on eliciting "what" students think happens in terms of energy transfer when chemical bonds break or form (e.g., energy is absorbed or released) and in this investigation we provide insights into their reasoning about "how" and "why" it happens. Our findings reveal that many students struggle to build sound mechanistic explanations for energy transfer between objects at different temperatures and for energy transformation and transfer during the formation of chemical bonds.

Mechanistic reasoning in science education: A literature review

“…Identifying factors encompasses three of seven categories, i.e., identifying entities, properties of entities and organization of entities, and "unpacking factors" and "linking" can be considered to respectively refer to "identifying activities" and "chaining" (Krist et al, 2019, p. 182-183). The studies in domains of biology (Haskel-Ittah et al, 2020b;Southard et al, 2016Southard et al, , 2017van Mil et al, 2013) and chemistry (Keiner & Graulich, 2020, 2021Macrie-Shuck & Talanquer, 2020;Moreira et al, 2019) introduce specific type of activities, i.e., interactions between entities. Likewise, Haskel-Ittah et al (2020a) used the term 'function' to represent a specific type of activity in the genetic subject.…”

“…Likewise, MR in an acid-base reaction requires to specify an underlying mechanism of reaction, i.e., "proton transfer or movement of electrons" (Cooper et al, 2016(Cooper et al, , p. 1705. MR is a form of thinking about a mechanism that is inherently causal (N:30) (Bachtiar et al, 2021;Becker et al, 2016;Bolger et al, 2012;Caspari et al, 2018a;Cooper et al, 2016;Crandell et al, 2019Crandell et al, , 2020de Andrade et al, 2021;Dickes et al, 2016;Haskel-Ittah et al, 2020a, 2020bHaskel-Ittah & Yarden, 2018;Keiner & Graulich, 2020, 2021Krist et al, 2019;Macrie-Shuck & Talanquer, 2020;Mathayas et al, 2021;Moore, 2021;Moreira et al, 2019;Russ et al, 2008Russ et al, , 2009Scalco et al, 2018;Scherr & Robertson, 2015;Scott et al, 2018;Southard et al, 2016Southard et al, , 2017Talanquer, 2018;Tang et al, 2020;van Mil et al, 2013;Watts et al, 2020) 2. Basic elements of MR Entities and activities of these entities are explicitly mentioned as necessary elements of MR (N:26) (Bachtiar et al, 2021;Caspari et al, 2018;Crandell et al, 2019Crandell et al, , 2020de Andrade et al, 2021;Dickes et al, 2016;Haskel-Ittah et al, 2020a…”

“…Basic elements of MR Entities and activities of these entities are explicitly mentioned as necessary elements of MR (N:26) (Bachtiar et al, 2021;Caspari et al, 2018;Crandell et al, 2019Crandell et al, , 2020de Andrade et al, 2021;Dickes et al, 2016;Haskel-Ittah et al, 2020a, 2020bHaskel-Ittah & Yarden, 2018;Keiner & Graulich, 2021Krist et al, 2019;Macrie-Shuck & Talanquer, 2020;Mathayas et al, 2021;Moore, 2021;Moreira et al, 2019;Russ et al, 2008Russ et al, , 2009Scalco et al, 2018;Scherr & Robertson, 2015;Southard et al, 2016Southard et al, , 2017Talanquer, 2018;Tang et al, 2020;van Mil et al, 2013;Watts et al, 2020) Entities and activities of entities are implicitly considered as necessary elements of MR but are referred to under different, domain-specific, names (N:4) (Becker et al, 2016;Bolger et al, 2012;Cooper et al, 2016;Scott et al, 2018) 3. Scale levels of the basic elements of MR Studies describing the basic elements of MR, particularly referring to entities, at (at least) one scale level below the scale level of a target phenomenon (Bachtiar et al, 2021;Becker et al, 2016;Bolger et al, 2012;Caspari et al, 2018a;Cooper et al, 2016;Crandell et al, 2019Crandell et al, , 2020de Andrade et al, 2021;…”

“…9 (Caspari et al, 2018a(Caspari et al, , 2018bHaskel-Ittah & Yarden, 2018;Houchlei et al, 2021;Krist et al, 2019;Moore, 2021;Newman et al, 2021;Scherr & Robertson, 2015;Southard et al, 2016) 4. Reflecting expert-like thinking 5 (Becker et al, 2016;Macrie-Shuck & Talanquer, 2020;Newman et al, 2021;Southard et al, 2016Southard et al, , 2017) 5. MR as a valuable assessment criterion 3 (Russ et al, 2008(Russ et al, , 2009Russ & Hutchison, 2006) 6.…”

What Role May Intuitive Concepts about Chemical Ideas Play When Students Take Timed Tests?

“…While additional details are associated with this model, the central role of the interaction of working memory and long-term memory is useful in several ways for understanding how students develop their knowledge of chemistry . In particular, the notion that students have naı̈ve conceptions about chemistry that influence how they construct new knowledge has been investigated many times in this Journal , including recently. − …”