Research in Organic Chemistry education has revealed students' challenges in mechanistic reasoning. When solving mechanistic tasks, students tend to focus on explicit surface features, apply fragmented conceptual knowledge, rely on rote-memorization and, hence, often struggle to build well-grounded causal explanations. When taking a resource…

A sample of 217 students (from grades 4 to 8) who were enrolled in an elementary school science-oriented gifted and talented program were compared to 91 mainstreamed subjects in grades 7 through 10. Assessement instruments included: a battery of Piagetian measures designed to assess combinatorial reasoning, probabilistic reasoning, and the ability…

Compared formal reasoning responses of seventh-and eighth-grade students on three tests of formal reasoning. The three tests differ only in the mode of equipment presentation on identical test items and problems. Tests included three-dimension demonstration (Lawson), two-dimension showing drawings of materials used in three-dimensional test, and…