Students often face difficulties when presented with chemical structures and asked to relate them to properties of those substances. Learning to relate structures to properties, both in predicting properties based on chemical structures and interpreting properties to infer structure, is pivotal in students’ education in chemistry. This troublesome but critical concept is often referred to as structure–property relationships. While there is no shortage of literature on students’ difficulties with this concept, there is a lack of methodologies that can directly and quantitatively reveal underlying assumptions about structure–property relationships that constrain students’ thinking. This study applied a “chemical thinking” lens to elucidate assumptions about structure–property relationships thinking. A combination of qualitative analysis using a think-aloud interview protocol was used with quantitative analysis of eye tracking data to probe students’ reasoning when relating molecular structures of volatile hydrochlorocarbons to infrared spectral properties. Our initial findings offer partial validation of a newly developed methodology for analyzing eye tracking data to expose reasoning patterns that appear to correspond to identifiable underlying assumptions.

Professional development that bridges gaps between educational research and practice is needed. However, bridging gaps can be difficult because teachers and educational researchers often belong to different Communities of Practice, as their activities, goals, and means of achieving those goals often differ. Meaningful collaboration among teachers and educational researchers can create a merged Community of Practice in which both teachers and educational researchers mutually benefit. A collaboration of this type is described that centered on investigating students' abilities to apply chemical thinking when engaged in authentic tasks. We describe the design-based principles behind the collaboration, the work of the collaborative team, and a self-evaluation of results interpreted through a Communities-of-Practice perspective, with primary focus on the teachers' perceptions. Analysis revealed ways in which teachers' assessments shifted toward more research-based practice and ways in which teachers navigated the research process. Implications for affordances and constraints of such collaborations among teachers and educational researchers are discussed.

The ability to evaluate options and make informed decisions about problems in relevant contexts is a core competency in science education that requires the use of both domain-general and discipline-specific knowledge and reasoning strategies. In this study we investigated the implicit assumptions and modes of reasoning applied by individuals with different levels of training in chemistry when engaged in a task that demanded the evaluation of the benefits, costs, and risks (BCR) of using different chemical substances. We were interested in identifying and characterizing different levels of sophistication in the use of chemistry concepts and ideas in BCR reasoning. Our qualitative study elicited reasoning patterns that ranged from intuitive to mixed to normative, with students mostly in mid-undergraduate years demonstrating reasoning that was a mixture of intuitive and chemical ways of thinking. Intuitive reasoning was governed primarily by affective impressions about the substances under evaluation. Consideration of compositional, structural, and energetic features of substances was observed with increased training in chemistry, with a tendency to mix particle-level explanations with intuitive assumptions. Normative thinking shifted toward proactive use of appropriate disciplinary knowledge, recognition of a need for more data about bulk properties particularly on large scales, and consideration of pros, cons, and trade-offs. Implications are discussed for ways to improve the undergraduate chemistry curriculum so that students gain proficiency in making productive judgments and informed decisions.

Making decisions about the production and use of chemical substances is of central importance in many fields. In this study, a research team comprising teachers and educational researchers collaborated in collecting and analyzing cognitive interviews with students from 8th grade through first-year university general chemistry in an effort to map progression in students' ability to make decisions about the consequences of using and producing chemicals. Study participants were asked to explain their reasoning about which fuel would be best to power a small vehicle. Data were analyzed using a "chemical thinking" lens to characterize conceptual sophistication and complexity of reasoning. Results revealed that most reasoning was intuitive in conceptual sophistication and relational in argumentative nature, driven by the consequences of using the fuels based on their composition. Implications are discussed for the design of learning experiences and assessments that better support students' development of decision-making using chemical knowledge.