Misconceptions in school thermodynamics

Johnstone, A. H.; Macdonald, J J; Webb, Graham

doi:10.1088/0031-9120/12/4/011

Cited by 70 publications

(75 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…As expressed by one of the students, "You actually heat up the thing, so you actually need energy for the reaction to take place, so it is an endothermic reaction." Similar use of such perceptually dominated thinking have been reported by De Vos and Verdonk (1986) with 15-16 year old students; Johnstone, MacDonald and Webb (1977) with 16-18 year old students, and Riberio et al (1990) with fourth year university chemistry students.…”

Section: Use Of Perceptuauy Dominated Thinkingsupporting

confidence: 80%

An investigation on the scientific thinking ability of fourth year university students

Boo

Toh

1998

Research in Science Education

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This paper reports on a study which examined the ability of a sample of fourth year university students to think scientifically when presented with a range of chemical phenomena. The main data collection instrument was the clinical interview. Each subject was interviewed in-depth for about one hour on a one-to-one basis. Each interview was taped, transcribed verbatim and then analysed. Five familiar chemical reactions were used as foci for discussion in the interviews. For each reaction, each interviewee was asked, among other things, to make predictions about the overall energy change involved, and to make explanations as to why the change took place, i.e., the driving force for the change. The results show that the majority of the interviewees were using perceptually dominated thinking rather than conceptually dominated thinking; at the same time, they were unable to use science concepts consistently across the five reactions. It can thus be inferred that they were unable to think scientifically. Reasons for the lack of scientific thinking ability are explored and suggestions on alleviation of the problem are offered.In the literature, the term "scientific thinking" or "scientific reasoning" has been used to refer to science process skills, which in turn have also been described as "the scientific method" and/or "critical thinking skills" (Padilla, 1991). These process skills are defined as a set of broadly transferable skills, appropriate to many science disciplines and reflective of the true behaviour of scientists. These include skills such as observing, inferring, measuring, communicating, classifying, predicting, conlrolling variables, experimenting, and formulating explanations and models of the behaviour and attributes of the natural world.Stuessy (1984) argues that scientific thinking is the consistent and logical thought patterns which are used by individuals in formulating and testing hypotheses during the process of scientific inquiry. Kuhn, Amsel and O'Loughlin (1988) further suggest that at the heart of scientific thinking is the skilful coordination of theory and evidence. The discourse on scientific thinking by Hawkins and Pea (1987) highlights the aspect of the ability to "offer explanations in terms of formal concepts that meet communal norms (p. 298)." Driver (1985) in the context of examining pupils' use of alternative conceptions discusses the notion of perceptually dominated thinking which is thinking based on observable features in a problem situation, in contrast to conceptually dominated or scientific thinking.In this paper, the meaning of the term "scientific thinking" is derived from a consideration of the above definitions as well as from a consideration of the nature and aim of science. Here science is viewed as both a product comprising the body of scientific knowledge, and a process of constructing predictive conceptual models (Gilbert, 1991); and the aim of science is viewed as the establishment of generalisations governing the behaviour of the natural world (Chalmers, 1...

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Section: Use Of Perceptuauy Dominated Thinkingsupporting

confidence: 80%

An investigation on the scientific thinking ability of fourth year university students

Boo

Toh

1998

Research in Science Education

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“…Another problem is that science teaching in general and the teaching of thermodynamic concepts in particular are based on algorithms. In fact, empirical evidence suggests that this is a real problem (Johnstone et al, 1977;Mazur, 1997;Carson and Watson, 1999;Carson and Watson, 2002;Kim and Pak, 2002).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An analytical tool to determine undergraduate students' use of volume and pressure when describing expansion work and technical work

Nilsson

Niedderer

2012

Chem. Educ. Res. Pract.

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In undergraduate chemical thermodynamics teachers often include equations and view manipulations of variables as understanding. Undergraduate students are often not able to describe the meaning of these equations. In chemistry, enthalpy and its change are introduced to describe some features of chemical reactions. In the process of measuring heat at constant pressure, work is often disregarded. Therefore, we investigated how undergraduate students describe expansion work and technical work in relation to enthalpy and its change. Three empirical studies (n tot = 64, n tot = 22, n tot = 10) with undergraduate chemistry students taking their first or fifth chemistry course at two Swedish universities were conducted. Questions on enthalpy and its change, internal energy and its change, heat and work were administered in questionnaires, exam questions, hand-ins and interviews. An analytical matrix was developed and qualitative categories with respect to pressure and volume were formed. The results indicate that work in general and even more so expansion work and technical work are difficult processes to describe and relate to the definition and formula of enthalpy change. Work is mainly described without reference to pressure and volume. The properties of volume are more likely to be described correctly than the properties of pressure. The definition of enthalpy change at constant pressure is generalised to constant volume/varying pressure cases. This study gives further insight into the way in which students use pressure and volume as they describe expansion work and technical work as well as the contextual correctness of these descriptions. The matrix and categories can be used by researchers, teachers and students.

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“…Johnstone et al (1977) found that upper secondary pupils who had taken thermodynamics in chemistry tended to associate entropy with disorder, but did not manage to go beyond this in their understanding of the concept. Similarly, in their analysis of undergraduate chemistry students' responses to a questionnaire and interviews in relation to entropy, Sözbilir and Bennett (2007) identified students' connection of entropy to disorder as one of the main misunderstandings of the topic.…”

Section: Criticisms Of the Disorder Metaphormentioning

confidence: 97%

Good Use of a ‘Bad’ Metaphor

Haglund

2017

Sci & Educ

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Entropy is often introduced to students through the use of the disorder metaphor. However, many weaknesses and limitations of this metaphor have been identified, and it has therefore been argued that it is more harmful than useful in teaching. For instance, under the influence of the disorder metaphor, students tend to focus on spatial configuration with regard to entropy but disregard the role of energy, which may lead their intuition astray in problem solving. Albeit so, a review of research of students' ideas about entropy in relation to the disorder metaphor shows that students can use the metaphor in developing a more nuanced, complex view of the concept, by connecting entropy as disorder to other concepts such as microstates and spreading. The disorder metaphor-in combination with other explanatory approaches-can be used as a resource for learning, in giving students an early flavour of what entropy means, so long as we acknowledge its limitations; we can put this Bbad^metaphor to good use in teaching.

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Misconceptions in school thermodynamics

Cited by 70 publications

References 3 publications

An investigation on the scientific thinking ability of fourth year university students

An investigation on the scientific thinking ability of fourth year university students

An analytical tool to determine undergraduate students' use of volume and pressure when describing expansion work and technical work

Good Use of a ‘Bad’ Metaphor

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