Investigating students’ argumentation when judging the plausibility of alternative reaction pathways in organic chemistry

Abstract

Building scientific arguments is a central ability for all scientists regardless of their specific domain. In organic chemistry, building arguments is a necessary skill to estimate reaction processes in consideration...

Considering alternative reaction mechanisms: students’ use of multiple representations to reason about mechanisms for a writing-to-learn assignment

“…However, further research is necessary to understand how students use these representations in their reasoning. Some existing studies provide insight into how students reason in chemistry (Kraft et al, 2010;Christian and Talanquer, 2012;Sevian and Talanquer, 2014;Weinrich and Talanquer, 2016;Lieber and Graulich, 2022). Specifically, studies demonstrate that few students reason based on mental models that relate structure to reactivity, while many students rely on memorized rules or cases (Kraft et al, 2010;Christian and Talanquer, 2012).…”

“…Specifically, studies demonstrate that few students reason based on mental models that relate structure to reactivity, while many students rely on memorized rules or cases (Kraft et al, 2010;Christian and Talanquer, 2012). Similarly, students often face challenges with integrating multiple variables into their reasoning (Sevian and Talanquer, 2014;Weinrich and Talanquer, 2016) or using reasoning to connect evidence to claims (Lieber and Graulich, 2022). The challenges students have with reasoning in organic chemistry specifically may be related to a tendency for rote memorization rather than meaningful learning (Grove and Bretz, 2012).…”

Closing the gap of organic chemistry students’ performance with an adaptive scaffold for argumentation patterns

“…In addition to the benefits of using argument components, building strong arguments also involves the appropriate use of scientific concepts (Sandoval and Millwood, 2005;Choi et al, 2013;Lieber and Graulich, 2022). Therefore, CER scaffolding does not only provide support for the structure of arguments but can also be enhanced with the incorporation of concepts (McNeill et al, 2006;Songer and Gotwals, 2012).…”

“…However, the way how we want students to build arguments often differs from how students actually build, use, and understand argumentation (McNeill and Krajcik, 2012). The most common observation is that students experience difficulties supporting their claim with evidence and justifying it with reasoning when building arguments (Deng and Flynn, 2021;Petritis et al, 2021;Lieber and Graulich, 2022), as students often do not know what counts as evidence or reasoning (Sadler, 2004) or tend to limit their argumentation to evidence and overlook reasoning. Moreover, students experience challenges with using scientific rules and principles when connecting evidence and reasoning (McNeill and Krajcik, 2012;Walker et al, 2019).…”

“…In addition to the reported challenges with structuring an argument, applying conceptual understanding when building arguments can also be challenging. Difficulties with conceptual knowledge might hinder building chemically knowledgeable and multivariate arguments (Cruz-Ramirez de Arellano and Towns, 2014; Moon et al, 2016;Pabuccu and Erduran, 2017;Deng and Flynn, 2021;Lieber and Graulich, 2022). Thereby, students make use of single concepts to justify their claim, even when it is necessary to include multiple concepts in their decision-making (McNeill et al, 2006).…”