Understanding Possibilities and Limitations of Abstract Chemical Representations for Achieving Conceptual Understanding

Cognitive Dissonance as an Instructional Tool for Understanding Chemical Representations

“…This conceptual understanding is defined as comprehension of the principles and concepts of a given domain or subject, and the interrelationship between the different concepts. What we know from previous studies is that the combination of texts with submicro and symbolic representations (presented together) does not give any recordable advantage for conceptual understanding (Corradi et al 2012(Corradi et al , 2014 compared with a text-only condition. These studies (Corradi et al 2014) indicate that there might be a different impact on the construction of the internal representations.…”

“…We know that learners do not have better recordable learning gains for conceptual understanding, whether learners receive only a text, or a text with symbols, with submicroscopic representations or with both, and without sequencing, each time presented together (Corradi et al 2014). As the introduction indicates, strong interaction between internal and external representations could have a positive effect on conceptual understanding (Schnotz 2005).…”

“…As such, a range of instructional aides have been tried to overcome the limitations of low prior knowledge learners but without proper understanding why any of these would be the best possible types (Ainsworth 2011;Corradi et al 2012Corradi et al , 2014Eysink et al 2009;Kozma and Russel 2005).…”

“…Other research uses concept maps (e.g., Ainsworth and Iacovides 2005;Lawrie et al 2009), note taking (Corradi et al 2014;Fisher and Harris 1973), making summaries (Neuwirth and Kaufer 1989) or giving self-explanations (Eysink et al 2009). When looking at these instructional aids in terms of the model of Schnotz, in each of these cases learners are asked to externalize their internal representation into a new external representation (descriptive or visual in case of note taking; depictive in case of drawings; auditory or descriptive in case of selfexplanations).…”

“…To answer our first research question, we used a technique originating in text comprehension research, whereby propositions were used as an indication of how the internal representation was constructed (Corradi et al 2014;Kozma and Russel 1997;Recht and Leslie 1988). Propositions are single ideas expressed through at least a verb and a noun and can be categorized as correct or incorrect, unique (belonging to a single representation) or overlapping (belonging to two or more representations).…”