Co-author: Megan Nagel, Associate Professor of Chemistry, Penn State Greater Allegheny
Researchers in physics education have recently been applying dual-process theories of reasoning and decision-making (DPToR) as a guide to inform the development of research-based instructional materials. This approach is particularly well-suited for tasks and topics for which a strong incorrect intuitive model interferes with a student’s ability to successfully apply their conceptual understanding. In this talk, we will describe an interdiscipinary research project designed to identify topics and questions in the general chemistry curriculum for which we expect that an intervention approach rooted in DPToR would help students to improve their reasoning. This project adapts a novel tool from the physics education research literature known as the reasoning chain construction task. In this tool, students are provided with a limited number of true statements from which they must generate a reasoning chain to support their answer to a question. We will illustrate our approach and the utility of this tool with results from a task on the ideal gas law.
* This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. DUE-1821390, DUE-1821123, DUE-1821400, DUE-1821511, and DUE-1821561.
