Exploring Learners’ Conceptual Resources: Singapore A Level Students’ Explanations in the Topic of Ionisation Energy

Abstract

This paper describes findings from a study to explore Singapore A-level (Grades 11 and 12, 16 Y19 yr old) students' understanding of ionisation energy, an abstract and complex topic that is featured in school chemistry courses. Previous research had reported that students in the United Kingdom commonly use alternative notions based on the perceived stability of full shells and the Fsharing out_ of nuclear force, but that such ideas tend to be applied inconsistently. This paper describes results from the administration of a two-tier multiple-choice instrument, the ionisation energy diagnostic instrument, to find (1) whether A-level students in Singapore have similar ways of thinking about the factors influencing ionisation energy as reported from their A-level counterparts in the UK; and (2) how Singapore A-level students explain the trend of ionisation energy across different elements in Period 3. The results indicate that students in Singapore use the same alternative ideas as those in the UK, and also a related alternative notion. The study also demonstrates considerable inconsistency in the way students responded to related items. The potential significance of the findings to student understanding of complex topics across the sciences is considered.

Conceptual Resources for Learning Science: Issues of transience and grain‐size in cognition and cognitive structure

“…The notion of 'sharing out' does not match the scientific model, but would again seem a suitable candidate for the operation of a pattern recognition process at early levels of cognitive processing: a p-prim (Taber & Tan, 2007).…”

Improving preservice chemistry teachers’ content knowledge through intervention activities

“…The use of these ideas is replicated across continents with little variation between pupils around the world. Many students and their teachers explain variations in ionisation energy values using arguments that reveal ACs about the electrostatic properties of the electrons and nucleus of an atom, others use 'stability' as the cause without connecting this to thermodynamic factors that might support such arguments (Taber & Tan, 2007;Tan et al, 2008).…”

Understanding the Idea of Chemical Elements and Their Periodic Classification in Spanish Students Aged 16–18 Years

“…The second of the profiles outlined above is exemplified by the work of Taber (Taber, 1998(Taber, , 1999(Taber, , 2003Taber & Tan, 2007) and Talanquer (2006Talanquer ( , 2007Talanquer ( , 2010. These studies concerned the analysis of misconceptions and intuitive explanations used by chemistry students, some of which are particularly relevant in the analysis of the properties of chemical elements and their compounds, as well as on their use and interpretation of the Periodic Table. Thus, in Taber's studies, students commonly misunderstood the scientific model for explaining and predicting trends in ionisation energy.…”

“…However, less attention has been devoted to identifying the difficulties and shortcomings in student learning or to investigating the effects of proposed strategies and resources to improve the teaching and learning of this subject. As a consequence, with some exceptions (Ben-Zvi & Gemut, 1998;Franco-Mariscal, 2011;Linares, 2004;Taber, 1999;Taber & Tan, 2007;Talanquer, 2006Talanquer, , 2010Wang & Barrow, 2013), this can be considered to be an area in which very few research studies have been carried out. This situation exists despite the importance of this topic in introductory chemistry courses at the high school and university levels (Scerri, 2007) and despite the fact that students often struggle to learn and understand this topic, indicating that the various obstacles to learning should be analysed and clarified (Franco-Mariscal & Oliva-Martínez, 2012;Schmidt, 1998).…”