How Do Students Reason About Chemical Substances and Reactions

The central goal of this work is to illustrate how the analysis of chemistry student thinking based on the identification of implicit assumptions about the nature of chemical substances and processes, together with the elicitation of shortcut reasoning strategies used to make judgments and decisions, can help us better explain the difficulties that our students face when asked to use atomic–molecular models of matter to analyze structure–property relationships. This way of conceptualizing student reasoning has several pedagogical advantages. First, it helps us make sense of and bring coherence to a variety of reported alternative conceptions and common student errors in different chemistry topics. Moreover, it facilitates making predictions about students’ ideas and difficulties in many areas. Finally, it provides a framework for analyzing progression of understanding with training in the discipline.

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