A deep understanding of organic chemistry requires a learner to understand many concepts and have fluency with multiple skills. This understanding is particularly necessary for constructing and using mechanisms to explain chemical reactions. Electrophilicity and nucleophilicity are two fundamental concepts to learning and understanding reaction…

Molecular modeling can be used as an excellent teaching method for providing better insight into the mechanism of free radical reactions. Due to its highly visual nature, it can affect and improve students' perception and visualization of chemistry phenomena. The majority of chemistry students will know how to represent a reaction between two free…

This study investigates students' cognitive resources for identifying symmetry elements using survey data collected from 39 inorganic chemistry students from twelve undergraduate inorganic classes at universities across the United States. We propose a framework that leverages students' knowledge of symmetry elements as a manifold of cognitive…

In order for students to reach a level of meaningful understanding of chemistry, it is vital that they are able to form accurate relationships between different concepts. In particular, in organic chemistry, identifying intermolecular reactions, considering these reactions as a whole, and defining their results will make important contributions to…

Being able to move between different representations levels (macroscopic, submicroscopic, and symbolic) is important to understand a chemical phenomenon meaningfully. The current study investigated how pre-service science teachers moved from symbolic representation to sub-microscopic representation. A total of 205 pre-service science teachers,…

The focus of the present study is the learning processes of concepts related to hydrogen bonds, which were developed using a didactic sequence (DS). Based on the perspective of Imre Lakatos, it was observed whether the explanatory models created by upper-secondary students form progressive transition sequences, which are similar to what Lakatos,…

This article presents and discusses the results of a study that investigates university students' comprehension of the concept of molar concentration, following teaching and evaluation of the subject. The specific problems underlying learning of this concept have not yet been focused on in sufficient detail or depth. A "Reasoning with…

Chemistry students often struggle in organic chemistry courses. In fact, these courses are viewed by some as "weed-out" classes. There are many fundamental concepts covered in general chemistry that contribute to students' ability to succeed in organic chemistry. One of those fundamental topics, and the focus of this study, is the topic…

General Chemistry serves virtually all STEM students. It has been accused of covering content in a "mile wide and inch deep" fashion. This has made it very difficult to assess, where chemistry educators have relied on assessments of specific topics. Assessing across all these different topics requires introducing many different chemical…

Educational games have demonstrated that they represent valuable pedagogical instruments, which can contribute to teaching and learning in a gratifying environment. In particular in chemistry courses, an important effort has been made to facilitate complex interrelated concepts in an easy, enjoyable, and sometimes competitive way. "Compounds…

Are the ways of engaging with the world that students develop through higher education particular to bodies of knowledge they study? In this article, we examine how students' accounts of the discipline of chemistry in England and South Africa changed over the three years of their undergraduate degrees. Based on a longitudinal phenomenographic…

With many universities now admitting students into their science programs with little or no prior knowledge of the relevant field, significant challenges arise in the way these fields are introduced. Challenges mount with various preconceived ideas regarding the levels of difficulty, thus necessitating introductory concepts be presented in…

In this study, how prospective chemistry teachers (PCTs) perceive precipitation and conceptualize precipitation reactions at the symbolic level was explored. Further, it was of interest to identify PCTs' visualization of the sub-microscopic level of precipitation reactions. The sample was drawn from the Chemistry Education Department at the…

One of the goals of science education is to help students make sense of the world around them. To that end, it is critical that students understand the central ideas in each discipline like, in chemistry, energy and interactions. These ideas are of particular importance because they are directly related to one another and are relevant across other…

Student-generated drawings are known to be effective in building and revealing students' conceptions of chemistry. Some chemistry concepts, moreover, include changes and processes that cannot be merely represented by static drawings. Computer-based animations are needed to represent the dynamics. In this study, 25 chemistry student teachers, who…