How Mapping Reasoning about Equilibrium Shapes Pre-Service Teacher Understanding of Learners and Instruction

Yezierski Research Group 

Miami University, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Background

Research Questions 

1. How can students’ inaccurate ideas about equilibrium be classified and explained using Talanquer’s “commonsense reasoning (assumptions and heuristics)”?

2. How can the process of eliciting, classifying, and explaining students’ inaccurate ideas along with diSessa’s “knowledge in pieces” inform pre-service teachers’ perception of their future students and how to best teach them?

Methods 

Results 

Conclusions, Implications, & Limitations 

Research Question #1

• Proportion of students who seemed to use heuristics when providing largely incorrect reasons for their answers: Over half

• Four heuristic types: covariance, overgeneralization, mechanical causality, availability

• Most frequently used heuristics: covariance followed by availability.

• A wide range of responses can be reduced to a manageable number of heuristics to interpret how students are reasoning about chemical phenomena.

Research Question #2

• Student understandings and preconceptions are not necessarily coherent.

• Students build reasonings for new concepts based on potentially unrelated concepts (a la “knowledge in pieces”) they already have experience with.

• Deeper analysis into student responses reveals incredibly varied student ideas. Students may be incorrectly applying other concepts that were productive before.

Implications 

• “Commonsense reasoning”⁴ and “Knowledge in Pieces”⁵ are productive frameworks for examining pre-assessment data from students.

• Understanding the complexity of student ideas and reasoning procedures is difficult and requires a lot of work, making this process unattainable for most teachers. Applying a framework for student reasoning strategies can inform teaching.

• Focusing on why students misunderstand a concept results in a deeper understanding of student thinking and ideas.

• Specifying why and how particular concepts are related in chemistry may help students make correct connections between ideas over time.

• Research-informed chemistry curriculum and teaching strategies may help teachers better understand their students’ ideas.

Limitations 

• Difficulty with heuristic classification resulted from short and shallow reasons given by student participants; precision and accuracy of classification is dependent on assessment instrument, knowledge of students’ prior knowledge, and length/depth of student answers. complexities of eliciting and sensemaking of student ideas.

References & Acknowledgements 

1. Van Katwijk, L., Jansen, E., & Van Veen, K. (2023). Pre-service teacher research: a way to future-proof teachers?. European Journal of Teacher Education, 46(3), 435-455. 

2. Duit, R. (2009). Bibliography–STCSE. Students’ and Teachers’ Conceptions and Science Education (https://archiv.leibniz-ipn.de/stcse/download_stcse.html).

3. Talanquer, V. (2012). Chemistry education: ten dichotomies we live by. Journal of chemical education, 89(11), 1340-1344.

4. Talanquer, V. (2006). Commonsense chemistry: A model for understanding students' alternative conceptions. Journal of Chemical Education, 83(5), 811.

5. DiSessa, A. A. (2018). A friendly introduction to “knowledge in pieces”: Modeling types of knowledge and their roles in learning. In Invited lectures from the 13th international congress on mathematical education (pp. 65-84). Springer International Publishing.

6. Voska, K. W., & Heikkinen, H. W. (2000). Identification and analysis of student conceptions used to solve chemical equilibrium problems. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 37(2), 160–176. doi:10.1002/(sici)1098-2736(200002)37:2<160::aid-tea5>3.0.co;2-m 

7. Yamtinah, S., Indriyanti, N. Y., Saputro, S., Mulyani, S., Ulfa, M., Mahardiani, L., Satriana, T., &  Shidiq, A. S. (2019). The identification and analysis of students’ misconception in chemical equilibrium using computerized two-tier multiple-choice instrument. Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 1157, 042015. doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1157/4/042015 .

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/1157/4/042015/meta

We sincerely thank our research participants for providing the opportunity for development as researchers and teachers of chemistry.