Learning Chemistry: What, When, and How?

Yaron, David; Karabinos, Michael; Evans, Karen L.; Davenport, Jodi L.; Cuadros, Jordi; Greeno, James G.

doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-0594-9_4

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Since then the work has greatly expanded in its dissemination-over 500,000 students a year use the Cognitive Tutor Algebra course (e.g., Ritter, Anderson, Koedinger, & Corbett, 2007)-and in its scope-Cognitive Tutors and variations thereof have been created for a wide variety of content, including intercultural competence (Ogan, Aleven, & Jones, 2010), statistics (Lovett, Meyer, & ille, 2008), chemistry (Yaron et al, 2010), and genetics (Corbett, Kauff man, MacLaren, Wagner, & Jones, 2010). Many large-scale evaluations of these courses have demonstrated their eff ectiveness (Ritter, Kulikowich, Lei, McGuire, & Morgan, 2007).…”

Section: Testing Knowledge Component Models In Instructional Contextsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning to Think: Cognitive Mechanisms of Knowledge Transfer

Koedinger

Roll

2012

The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning

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Learning to think is about transfer. The scope of transfer is essentially a knowledge representation question. Experiences during learning can lead to alternative latent representations of the acquired knowledge, not all of which are equally useful. Productive learning facilitates a general representation that yields accurate behavior in a large variety of new situations, thus enabling transfer. This chapter explores two hypotheses. First, learning to think happens in pieces and these pieces, or knowledge components, are the basis of a mechanistic explanation of transfer. This hypothesis yields an instructional engineering prescription: that scientific methods of cognitive task analysis can be used to discover these knowledge components, and the resulting cognitive models can be used to redesign instruction so as to foster better transfer. The second hypothesis is that symbolic languages act as agents of transfer by focusing learning on abstract knowledge components that can enhance thinking across a wide variety of situations. The language of algebra is a prime example and we use it to illustrate (1) that cognitive task analysis can reveal knowledge components hidden to educators; (2) that such components may be acquired, like first language grammar rules, implicitly through practice; (3) that these components may be "big ideas" not in their complexity but in terms of their usefulness as they produce transfer across contexts; and (4) that domain-specific knowledge analysis is critical to effective application of domain-general instructional strategies.

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Section: Testing Knowledge Component Models In Instructional Contextsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning to Think: Cognitive Mechanisms of Knowledge Transfer

Koedinger

Roll

2012

The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning

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“…This may be because mathematical procedures related to equilibria are learned as procedures, with little connection to underlying concepts. 21 Ocean acidification provides a motivating and integrative context to introduce interconnected fundamental concepts related to acid and base strength, pH dependence of speciation in aqueous solutions (Figure 2b), and the importance of understanding solubility and precipitation.…”

Section: ■ Tackling the Dual Challenges Of Sustainability Science Lit...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some common themes emerge, however, in articulating key reasons for negative student experiences of first year chemistry. These include insufficient attention by educators to identifying the student audience and their diverse needs for learning chemistry, lack of clearly articulated student learning outcomes, overreliance on teacher-centered lecture-based pedagogies, overemphasis on the mathematical and quantitative aspects of chemistry, insufficient activities and assessment at higher levels of cognitive taxonomies, and excessive demands on student working memory. − …”

Section: The Chemistry Education Challengementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Studies have shown that many students do not remember details of chemistry related to acid/base chemistry and solubility and precipitation and complexation shortly after completing general chemistry. This may be because mathematical procedures related to equilibria are learned as procedures, with little connection to underlying concepts . Ocean acidification provides a motivating and integrative context to introduce interconnected fundamental concepts related to acid and base strength, pH dependence of speciation in aqueous solutions (Figure b), and the importance of understanding solubility and precipitation.…”

Section: Vc3 Chemistry Topics and Climate Concept Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Infusing Sustainability Science Literacy through Chemistry Education: Climate Science as a Rich Context for Learning Chemistry

Mahaffy

Martin

Kirchhoff

et al. 2014

ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng.

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Global science is paying increasingly urgent attention to sustainability challenges, as evidenced by initiatives such as the working group determining whether Earth has moved from the Holocene to the Anthropocene Epoch on the geologic time scale and the interdisciplinary efforts to define and quantify our planetary boundaries. Despite the fact that much of the scientific work underlying these initiatives is based on measurements of fundamental chemistry parameters, sustainability literacy has not been incorporated in any systematic way into the undergraduate chemistry curriculum. We report here on the philosophy and implementation of a NSF-funded initiative, Visualizing the Chemistry of Climate Change (VC3), which provides an exemplar for developing strategies to fill that gap, focusing on climate change, one of the defining sustainability challenges of the 21st century. VC3 targets the strategic first year university and college chemistry courses that are common to the program requirements of many science and engineering majors. The overall goals of the VC3 project are to infuse climate literacy principles into the learning of representative core topics in North American general chemistry courses for science majors, while demonstrating that learning core chemistry topics by starting with an important rich context is a viable approach. ABSTRACT: Global science is paying increasingly urgent attention to sustainability challenges, as evidenced by initiatives such as the working group determining whether Earth has moved from the Holocene to the Anthropocene Epoch on the geologic time scale and the interdisciplinary efforts to define and quantify our planetary boundaries. Despite the fact that much of the scientific work underlying these initiatives is based on measurements of fundamental chemistry parameters, sustainability literacy has not been incorporated in any systematic way into the undergraduate chemistry curriculum. We report here on the philosophy and implementation of a NSF-funded initiative, Visualizing the Chemistry of Climate Change (VC3), which provides an exemplar for developing strategies to fill that gap, focusing on climate change, one of the defining sustainability challenges of the 21st century. VC3 targets the strategic first year university and college chemistry courses that are common to the program requirements of many science and engineering majors. The overall goals of the VC3 project are to infuse climate literacy principles into the learning of representative core topics in North American general chemistry courses for science majors, while demonstrating that learning core chemistry topics by starting with an important rich context is a viable approach.

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Chemistry Education and Human Activity

Mahaffy

2015

Chemistry Education

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Learning Chemistry: What, When, and How?

Cited by 5 publications

References 4 publications

Learning to Think: Cognitive Mechanisms of Knowledge Transfer

Learning to Think: Cognitive Mechanisms of Knowledge Transfer

Infusing Sustainability Science Literacy through Chemistry Education: Climate Science as a Rich Context for Learning Chemistry

Chemistry Education and Human Activity

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