Promoting understanding of chemical bonding and spontaneity through student explanation and integration of ideas

Abstract

This article explores the effectiveness of intervention discussion sections for a college general chemistry course designed to apply research on student preconceptions, knowledge integration, and student explanation. Two interventions, on bond energy and spontaneity, were tested and intervention student performance was compared with that of a control group that did not use the experimental pedagogy. Results indicate that this instruction, which identifies students' initial conceptions and integrates those ideas into class discussion, leads to enhanced conceptual understanding. The intervention group outperformed the control group on a written course midterm, the thermodynamics portion of a standardized American Chemical Society examination, and an in‐depth interview. In interviews, the intervention group students explained the energetics of bond breaking and formation at a more sophisticated level than did the control students. In contrast, control students were more tenuous in their thinking, tended to contradict themselves more when discussing bond energy, and harbored more misconceptions about spontaneity. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 39: 464–496, 2002

Evidence-based reform of teaching and learning

“…Even after years of instruction it has been reported that about 50 % of students [8,9], including graduate students and postdoctoral scholars, continue to harbor inconsistent ideas about the energetics of bond breaking. Somehow traditional instruction has failed these students; even though they have surely been taught multiple times that bond breaking is endothermic, many have constructed erroneous ideas about this concept.…”

“…Socially mediated learning-whether as informal groups during lectures or more structured cooperative learning groups-has been shown to improve learning outcomes [9,12]. Providing students with opportunities to discuss the material allows them to organize and sort the information (especially when explaining to others), making retrieval and appropriate use more likely in the future.…”

Advice to My Intellectual Grandchildren

“…Similarly, knowledge gleaned from research on effective strategies for moving students from common misconceptions, or as some prefer to call them, "naive conceptions", to those accepted by mature scientists belong there (41)(42)(43)(44).…”

Effectiveness of the argumentation method: A meta-analysis

“…Cross, Taasoobshirazi, Hendricks and Hickey (2008) identified that argumentation helps students to integrate their newly-acquired and existing knowledge, to learn concepts more thoroughly (Albe, 2008;Sadler, 2004), and to reduce misconceptions and become academically more successful. In addition, according to many experimental study results, students in argumentation group maintain better academic achievement than those in the traditional group (Ceylan, 2010;Deveci, 2009;Eryilmaz, 2002;Teichert & Stacy, 2002;Yeşiloğlu, 2007;Sağır and Kılıç, 2012;Kaya, 2005;Çelik, 2010;Özkara, 2011;Ceylan, 2010).…”