Organic chemistry education is one of the youngest research areas among all chemistry related research efforts, and its published scholarly work has become vibrant and diverse over the last 15 years. Research on problem-solving behavior, students' use of the arrow-pushing formalism, the investigation of students' conceptual knowledge and…

The design and use of a valid and reliable instrument for the assignment of cognitive complexity ratings to chemistry exam items is described in this paper. Use of such an instrument provides a simple method to quantify the cognitive demands of chemistry exam items. Instrument validity was established in two different ways: statistically…

Based on the analysis of available research on students' alternative conceptions about the particulate nature of matter, we identified basic implicit assumptions that seem to constrain students' ideas and reasoning on this topic at various learning stages. Although many of these assumptions are interrelated, some of them seem to change or…

Approximately 500 nonscience major university chemistry students were surveyed to record their interpretations of specific chemical symbolism before presenting modern concepts of atomic and molecular structure, in an attempt to understand the thought processes entering students use as they interpret symbolism. Results are reported and discussed.…

Determined was the effect of advanced organizers, as defined by Ausubel (1963), on the acquisition and retention of meaningful verbal material by elementary education majors at Purdue University. Two approaches were utilized. In one, the experimental group was exposed to an 800-word organizer on two occasions prior to the study of the learning…

Discusses the implications of piaget's intellectual developmentmodel with respect to teaching at the college level. Many students operate at the concrete level and are incapable of abstract formal operations, however their interest and motivation can be maintained through active involvement with the representative ideas and materials of the…

Reviews Piagetian concepts, the identification of student cognitive level of development, and chemistry instruction. (SL)

Discusses instructor considerations to be made concerning student cognitive development in preparing and teaching introductory chemistry. (SL)

Examined relation between college students' (N=108) ability to solve simple ratio tasks (for example, their proportional reasoning patterns) and their rule-governed behavior with the balance beam. Also identified modifications in a set of rules for the balance beam tasks. Results and implications for science instruction are discussed. (JN)

The first part of this publication is a study of students' math skills and logical abilities and their success in an introductory college chemistry course. A 29-item instrument was developed and administered to 343 students. Test scores for students who received either A or B in the course were compared with scores for those who received either D…

Described is a study which relates Piaget's theory of cognitive development to Lowenfeld's types of perceptual aptitude (i.e., visual v haptic orientation). General interpretations of questionnaire results from university students (N=312) are made that postulate a relationship linking incidence of perceptual and logical ability. (CS)

One approach to the study of cognitive processes highlights the distinctions between expert and novice problem solvers. This approach attempts to discover how experts and novices differ in the way they organize, retain and use domain related knowledge. It appears to some that what is learned from expert-novice research can help teachers to teach…

This investigation examined the relationship between problem solving ability and the criteria used to decide whether two classical mechanics problems could be solved similarly. The investigators began by comparing experts and novices on a similarity judgment task and found that experts predominantly relied on the problems' deep structure in…

The purpose of this study was to develop a procedure for the evaluation of M-demand of chemistry problems. It was shown that dimensional analysis upon the Neo-Piagetian theory of Pascual-Leone could help science teachers to understand the epistemological basis of their discipline. (CW)

Selected research studies that explore the assumption that college science students operate at a formal cognitive level are presented in this information digest. Studies are reviewed that relate to the areas of: (1) formal thought (examining the relationship between measured formal thought and that required to understand formal college physical…