Although one of the presumed aims of graduate training programs is to help students develop into practitioners of their chosen fields, very little is known about how this transition occurs. In the course of studying how graduate students learn to solve organic synthesis problems, we were able to identify some of the key factors in the epistemic…

Differences in problem-solving ability among organic chemistry graduate students and faculty were studied within the domain of problems that involved the determination of the structure of a molecule from the molecular formula of the compound and a combination of IR and [to the first power]H NMR spectra. The participants' performance on these tasks…

This paper reports results of a qualitative study of sixteen students enrolled in a second year organic chemistry course for chemistry and chemical engineering majors. The focus of the study was student use of the arrow-pushing formalism that plays a central role in both the teaching and practice of organic chemistry. The goal of the study was to…

This paper is based on a qualitative study of seven students enrolled in a two-semester organic chemistry course for chemistry and chemical engineering majors that focused on the reasoning the students had used to answer questions on the course exams. Narrative analysis was applied to create case records for each participant that were then…

A study examined the way graduate students solved mechanism problems that were far removed from the simple systems in which mechanisms are traditionally presented. One aim is to probe the extent to which the students' experiences with the organic chemistry as undergraduates prepared them to solve mechanism problems they were likely to face as…

This study investigated the role that spatial ability has in achievement in organic chemistry. Spatial ability was defined as containing two subfactors--spatial visualization and spatial orientation. Spatial visualization is the ability to mentally manipulate pictorially presented stimuli; involved in the processes of manipulation are the…

A model for problem solving stressing both psychological and cultural influences is presented. This model is based on the analyses of how graduate students (n=10) solve organic synthesis problems, along with two models of problem solving and a constructivist epistemological stance. (KR)

Reports on a study which examined the relationship between spatial ability and performance in organic chemistry. Results indicated that students with high spatial scores did significantly better on questions requiring problem solving skills, as well as on those requiring the mental manipulation of two-dimensional representations of a molecule. (TW)