Exploring the Effect of Prior Knowledge and Gender on Undergraduate Students’ Knowledge Structures in Chemistry

Abstract

Success in chemistry requires not only the ability to recruit prior knowledge but also the ability to establish strong connections between new and existing concepts to form knowledge clusters around core principles. How these knowledge structures are organized can be used to understand the relationships between concepts within a student's mind. 618 undergraduate students in a general chemistry course participated in this study at a US institution. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect, if any, that prior knowledge in chemistry and mathematics and gender have on the formation of students' knowledge structures. In addition, the structures were analyzed to identify the hidden connections between macroscopic, submicroscopic, and symbolic representations of chemical knowledge. To visualize these structures, a word association test (WAT) was created to determine concept relatedness. Student response data was then transformed into a series of distances by a computer program called JPathfinder, which created visual representations of the knowledge structures in the Gephi platform. The meaning and implications of these structures were discussed to provide ideas for teaching interventions that focus on weakly associated basic general chemistry concepts. The potential uses of WAT were also shared to help educators identify student misconceptions.

Facilitating Concept Map Analysis: Generating and Evaluating Representative General Chemistry Concept Maps with a Novel Use of Image J, Gephi, JPathfinder, and R

“…In addition to utilizing the eccentricity values, the extended chemistry triplet was considered in the analysis of clusters. The seventeen terms used in this study were classified using Becker's classification (2015) of each level based on inductive analysis, as well as the same classification schema determined by a group of chemistry professors and graduate and undergraduate students (Gulacar et al, 2019). Through this process, it has been found that chemistry terms can be classified with more than one representational level of chemistry (Gulacar et al, 2019(Gulacar et al, , 2020.…”

“…Each of the three representational levels of chemistry, macroscopic, submicroscopic, symbolic, and its extension, the process domain, were evaluated on each representative knowledge structure. The seventeen terms used in this study were classified using Becker's (2015) classification of each level based on inductive analysis, as well as the same classification schema determined in a study completed by Gulacar et al (2019) in which a group of chemistry professors and students that take the course categorized these terms based on the wide range of response words gathered in the Word Association Tests and how these concepts were introduced in the class. Through this process, it has been found that chemistry concepts can be classified with more than one representational level of chemistry (Gulacar et al, 2015(Gulacar et al, , 2019.…”

“…In order to further understand how students construct their knowledge in chemistry, researchers have categorized concepts and terms into three representational levels of chemistry -submicroscopic, macroscopic, and symbolic -commonly referred to as the chemistry triplet, and its extension, process (Johnstone, 1991). The submicroscopic level is related to concepts at the particle level such as atoms and bonding and are often used to explain macroscopic phenomena (Becker et al, 2015;Gulacar et al, 2019;Taber, 2013;Talanquer, 2011a;Yaman & Ayas, 2015). The macroscopic level represents tangible quantities that can either be measured or quantities that cannot be measured directly, but can be calculated, such as energy (Becker et al, 2015;Gulacar et al, 2019;Yaman & Ayas, 2015).…”

“…The submicroscopic level is related to concepts at the particle level such as atoms and bonding and are often used to explain macroscopic phenomena (Becker et al, 2015;Gulacar et al, 2019;Taber, 2013;Talanquer, 2011a;Yaman & Ayas, 2015). The macroscopic level represents tangible quantities that can either be measured or quantities that cannot be measured directly, but can be calculated, such as energy (Becker et al, 2015;Gulacar et al, 2019;Yaman & Ayas, 2015). The symbolic level illustrates the synthesis of the submicroscopic and the macroscopic levels and represents the overall changes of chemical substances typically expressed through equations and formulae (Becker et al, 2015;Dori & Sasson, 2008;Gulacar et al, 2019) proposed a fourth representational level of chemistry referred to as the process domain that represents the changes that occur when substances react with one another and serves as a connection linking the representational levels in chemistry triplet.…”

“…The macroscopic level represents tangible quantities that can either be measured or quantities that cannot be measured directly, but can be calculated, such as energy (Becker et al, 2015;Gulacar et al, 2019;Yaman & Ayas, 2015). The symbolic level illustrates the synthesis of the submicroscopic and the macroscopic levels and represents the overall changes of chemical substances typically expressed through equations and formulae (Becker et al, 2015;Dori & Sasson, 2008;Gulacar et al, 2019) proposed a fourth representational level of chemistry referred to as the process domain that represents the changes that occur when substances react with one another and serves as a connection linking the representational levels in chemistry triplet. These four representational levels of chemistry, referred to as the extended chemistry triplet in this study, provide researchers another dimension to understand how students conceptualize chemistry.…”