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Insights and teacher perceptions regarding students’ conceptions as they enter tertiary chemistry studies: a comparative study

journal contribution
posted on 2019-01-01, 00:00 authored by G A Lawrie, Madeleine SchultzMadeleine Schultz, A H Wright
The successful transition from high school to tertiary chemistry studies relies on a student’s ability to transfer prior understanding since many topics are extended during first year general chemistry. It was therefore of interest to investigate the perspectives of high school and tertiary teachers regarding which topics and concepts they perceived to be the most important and their views of student preparation. This study was paralleled by the refinement of a diagnostic concept instrument to explore chemistry preconceptions held by leaving high school students and incoming first year students across two institutions. This instrument has been shown to be valid, reliable, and consistent and has provided formative feedback to faculty and students in regard to alternate conceptions over several years. A mismatch was found between the perceptions of high school teachers regarding their students’ preparation and commencing students’ achievement on the instrument. The most important topic to high school teachers was how electron configuration relates to structure whereas for tertiary teaching faculty, it was the conservation of matter. The position and response of equilibrium to change was of lowest importance to both groups. Student misconceptions, attributable to different learning impediments, are considered and a series of recommendations is proposed to support chemistry teachers who practice each side of the secondary-tertiary transition.

History

Journal

International journal of science and mathematics education

Volume

17

Issue

1

Pagination

43 - 65

Publisher

Springer

Location

New York, N.Y.

ISSN

1571-0068

eISSN

1573-1774

Language

eng

Publication classification

C Journal article; C1.1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2017, Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan