Commonsense Chemistry: A Model for Understanding Students

Research: Science and Education edited by

Chemical Education Research

Diane M. Bunce The Catholic University of America Washington, DC 20064

Amy J. Phelps Commonsense Chemistry: A Model for Middle Tennessee State University Murfreesboro, TN 37132 Understanding Students’ Alternative Conceptions

Vicente Talanquer Department of Chemistry, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721; [email protected]

Research in science education in the last thirty years has shown that students enter chemistry classes with many preconceived ideas about the behavior of the natural world (1). These ideas, derived from previous physical and social experiences, often lead them to make predictions and build explanations different from those derived by currently accepted scientific theories and practices. Moreover, as learners try to assimilate new information into their existing knowledge structures, a variety of unintended instructional outcomes result. From this perspective, the recognition and characterization of students’ beliefs and prior knowledge seems to be crucial to helping them build scientific understandings (2). Unfortunately, most teachers do not adequately analyze and reflect on students’ thinking about natural phenomena. Instead, classroom assessment is typically designed to determine to what extent a student’s knowledge matches that sanctioned by school science (3). Students’ explanations are judged on a scale of right to wrong, and little analysis is done on the meaning or cognitive implications of the actual answers. Academic failure is normally attributed to either a lack of student effort and motivation or the use of inadequate instructional strategies. This system diverts teachers’ attention away from the actual student work and prevents them from using student thinking to inform their practice (4). My personal experience as a teacher educator indicates that, when given the opportunity, most college and secondary school chemistry teachers are interested in the analysis and discussion of research results on students’ alternative conceptions in chemistry. However, they are rapidly overwhelmed by the number and diversity of alternative conceptions that science learners may have. Teachers are often unable to identify any consistent patterns in the students’ thinking and thus see the vast inventory of students’ alternative conceptions as isolated pieces of information. Moreover, the catalog of students’ ideas can rapidly become a list of common mistakes that they see as their obligation to fix. Every mistake is quickly judged as a misconception, without further reflection on the actual source of the problem or any analysis of the underlying patterns in the students’ reasoning that might in fact be used as a resource to promote understanding. Most of the literature that describes, reviews, and summarizes research on alternative conceptions in chemistry traditionally organizes the information by topic or subject: states of matter, particulate nature of matter, chemical bonding, chemical equations, and so on (5–10). Unfortunately, this “inventory approach” makes it difficult for teachers to identify any common assumptions or patterns of reasoning that may be guiding students’ thinking about chemical phenomena. The development of such a common “explanatory framework” would be very useful to help chemistry teachers and www.JCE.DivCHED.org

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instructors to identify, understand, and even predict the possible alternative conceptions that their students may hold (11). Such a system would allow teachers to organize the important knowledge that they have about student ideas in chemistry in more meaningful ways. This paper discusses the results of a research project guided by the assumption that a common explanatory framework does exist and it can be described by analyzing the research literature on alternative conceptions in chemistry. Based on this supposition, the research project was guided by the following research question: • What common assumptions about the behavior of the natural world and associated patterns of reasoning underlie many of the alternative conceptions in chemistry as described in the research literature?

Although one should recognize that students’ ideas vary with age, personal history, and social background (1), the goal of this research project is to build a model of a typical “naïve” student in an introductory chemistry classroom in a Western society. The intention is to develop a useful framework that chemistry teachers and instructors can use to better understand and even predict many of their students’ ideas, and implement instructional strategies that promote learning and understanding. In the following section I describe the theoretical and empirical work guiding my analysis of students’ conceptions about chemical substances and phenomena, and the development of the proposed explanatory framework. Then I describe the research methodology used and present the central findings. This work represents an effort to utilize well-established results in chemical education research to develop tools and models that can help improve teacher thinking and practice. Theoretical Framework The present research work is based on the hypothesis that the conceptual difficulties of most science learners result from reasoning based on “common sense” (12–13). This commonsense approach is characterized by the use of patterns of reasoning that people unconsciously follow and apply without hesitating or considering other alternatives (14–15). Science learners that follow their “common sense” tend to generate quick explanations of natural phenomena based on intuition and broad generalizations, without much reflection. Every time we face a new problem, we tend to look for information and build generalizations in order to predict and control the phenomenon. Our explanations are generally simplified ways of understanding a problem and are guided by our personal experiences. For example, if we have a stomachache, we im-

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mediately think about what we ate. We search for a cause that is close both in time and proximity (16–17). Patterns of reasoning such as these help us simplify the complexity of the world around us and are very useful in our daily life because they frequently yield the right solution without demanding too much intellectual effort. Unfortunately, commonsense reasoning seems to be responsible for a great number of the alternative conceptions that we hold about the behavior of the natural world (18). For example, children who surmise that condensed water on the outside of a glass is liquid that has filtered through the walls are simply using common sense; they are looking for the most plausible cause given their perception of proximity in space. Commonsense reasoning is grounded in a set of presuppositions about the surrounding world and the nature of things, and relies on mental strategies to make decisions and build inferences based on the information that is readily available (13, 19–20). Recent work in developmental psychology seems to support the view that the human mind operates on the basis of a small number of domain-specific constraints that guide the process of acquiring knowledge in specific areas (21– 22). This seems to particularly hold true for knowledge about the physical world. People routinely make empirical assumptions about the material world around them. Several authors have argued that such constraints or presuppositions are organized in systems of knowledge, or conceptual frameworks, that have some—yet not necessarily all—of the characteristics of a theory (23–25). These domain-specific knowledge systems enable us to identify the relevant concepts in a given domain, although they also constrain reasoning about those same concepts. Research on human reasoning has also shown that people make inferences about the world by using processes that are relatively simple to apply. These shortcut reasoning procedures (also called heuristics) reduce the information-processing load (26–28). While heuristics often generate acceptable answers with little effort, they sometimes lead to severe and systematic biases and errors. Heuristics are not necessarily logical or coherent, rather their function is to make reasonable, adaptive inferences about the world given limited time and knowledge. They tend to be fast and frugal procedures in that they take little time to apply and use only a small amount of the available information. Commonsense reasoning seems to be based on the use of heuristics that control how and where to look for information when facing a problem, when to stop the search, and what to do with the results (16). The unconscious use of heuristics in problem solving or decision making can lead to answers or explanations that may appear incoherent and irrational from the scientific point of view, yet may reflect rational adaptations (17). This type of reasoning introduces variability in the explanation and decision patterns of a given person or among individuals that may hold similar knowledge systems and rely on the same set of heuristics (26–27). For example, when an unexpected event occurs, heuristic-based reasoning leads us to search for a cause that is close in space and time, and that is familiar and thus easy to recall (16). The salient cues that any given individual uses in order to explain the phenomenon are influenced by the particular context of the problem they are facing and by their personal history (27). Thus, different people may select different cues to guide their reasoning about a phenomenon 812


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and generate different explanations, even though they may share the same conceptual framework and reasoning patterns. Research in cognitive science and science education over the last three decades has given rise to a large body of empirical and theoretical results about students’ ideas of the physical world. Some of these studies have identified different presuppositions that seem to constrain student thinking about natural phenomena and guide the construction of the mental representations or models used to build explanations and make predictions (29–31). Other researchers have focused their efforts on the characterization of patterns of reasoning or heuristics that may explain some of the results in this area (13, 32–34). I have drawn from this body of research to build an answer to the central research question that drives this work and to characterize the central features of a model for the explanatory framework associated with commonsense chemistry. Methodology The present research work was completed in several phases as described below.

Phase One A thorough inventory of students’ alternative conceptions about chemical substances and phenomena was built based on the analysis of published original research in this area (5), and related review papers and books (6–10, 12–14). Attention was focused on those alternative conceptions held by a large proportion of students at the secondary school level and in general chemistry college-level courses. Alternative conceptions were organized by topics at this stage (structure of matter, chemical reactions, etc.). Phase Two A wider review and analysis of developmental psychology, cognitive science, and science education research literature was completed to identify different models and theoretical frameworks that could be useful in organizing the data (21– 41). The analysis of these works allowed me to build a preliminary coding scheme based on a reduced number of categories describing well-identified patterns of thought. Phase Three The categories were used to build a classification matrix and coding scheme that was then applied to reorganize a randomly selected set of alternative conceptions. During this process, new coding categories were created and some of the initial ones were redefined. Once a more complete set of patterns of reasoning was identified, I repeated the process with a different set of alternative conceptions to check for completeness and accuracy. Phase Four The proposed categories were reorganized into two major groups predicated on whether the associated alternative conceptions were based on empirical assumptions about the characteristics and behavior of the natural world, or were the result of simplified patterns of reasoning (heuristics). This analysis led to development of a model for an explanatory framework associated with commonsense chemistry.

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Findings The aforementioned analysis allowed me to identify the basic characteristics of a commonsense explanatory framework that seems to underlie many of the alternative conceptions held by students in introductory chemistry classes. Although I do not claim that this model represents the actual knowledge system of any given student, I believe that the proposed framework will help teachers and instructors categorize and better understand students’ learning difficulties in chemistry. Many of students’ alternative conceptions in chemistry seem to result from the confident and impulsive application of a crude, incomplete, limited, and superficial explanatory framework about chemical substances and phenomena. This knowledge system, while likely not operating at a conscious level of awareness, creates the illusion of explanatory depth (35–36): students believe that they understand more than they actually do. The proposed explanatory framework is based on a set of presuppositions about the surrounding world and the nature of things (empirical assumptions), and uses fast and frugal heuristics to make decisions and build inferences based on the information that is available (see List 1). The proposed explanatory framework relies on a central commitment to “naïve realism”, a view of the world that blindly relies on perceptual cues (12, 16, 18, 37). In particular, the commonsense learner assumes that: • All component parts of the world exist and develop independently of the observer. • Things are as they are perceived. • Something exists only if it can somehow be perceived. The less an object can be sensed, the less material it is. • Objects and materials tend to exist in “natural” states (normally stationary and inert). Only their abnormal properties and behaviors require explanation. These explanations should be based on the analysis of perceptible features. • There is a one-to-one correspondence between models and reality, and models are slightly imperfect representations of real things. Thus, reality can be used to explain the properties of the scientific models. These models have to be right; otherwise they are useless.

Empirical Assumptions Underpinning Alternative Conceptions The commonsense chemistry explanatory framework additionally relies on a set of assumptions about the characteristics of things in the natural world, their behavior and relationships. I have identified five basic assumptions: continuity, substantialism, essentialism, mechanical causality, and teleology. Continuity The “naïve” chemist thinks that matter can be continuously divided into smaller pieces. These pieces or particles of matter have the same qualitative properties as the macroscopic object. Thus, commonsense learners believe that the models of the microscopic world of atoms or molecules are a reduced version of the macroscopic world (12). For example, many www.JCE.DivCHED.org

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List 1. Elements of an Explanatory Framework of Commonsense Chemistry

Central Commitment of Naïve Realism Empirical Assumptions

Reasoning Heuristics

Continuity Substantialism Essentialism Mechanical Causality Teleology

Association Reduction Fixation Linear Sequencing

students think that copper atoms have a reddish color and that their volume increases when heated. They may also believe that atoms are stationary when the whole object is not moving (42, 43). The continuity assumption applies also to the quantitative properties of matter. Commonsense reasoners believe that properties of macroscopic and microscopic objects, such as position, velocity, energy, mass, and volume should always have continuous values. Substantialism Naïve chemists tend to attribute properties of material substances to abstract concepts or to processes and interactions (13, 38). The concept or the process itself is thus thought of as a material substance or as a property of a material substance. For example, students tend to think that heat has the properties of a fluid (12, 15), that chemical bonds are actually solid links between atoms, or that atomic shells are real material boundaries (44). Thus, it is not uncommon for these callow learners to think that chemical bonds (solid-like structures) are some type of energy containers (a fluid-like substance). Essentialism Commonsense learners think that objects and materials in the world have an underlying quality or inherent essence that determines the identity of these objects and materials (39). Naïve chemists believe this to be true even when they observe physical or perceptual changes in the properties of a substance. Some qualities seem thus to exist independently of the entities that possess them (silver may become dark when exposed to air, but it is still silver). The identity of a material is conserved if the student can follow or reconstruct its history (when copper reacts with nitric acid, the red vapors indicate that copper is still there) (45). Loss of identity is assumed mainly when the change involves a transformation into invisible or “nonmaterial” entities (gases, heat, light). Mechanical Causality Commonsense learners think that change in a system is always induced by an external agent and builds explanations in terms of causes and effects (29, 40). In particular, phenomena are explained by identifying an agent that directly, with its own body, or indirectly, with the help of a conduit or instrument, acts upon an object, thus altering its “natural” state. Thus, students will likely invent causes, neglect mutual effects, and think in terms of active and passive agents, and unidirectional changes. For example, students may think that an acid “attacks” a metal, but that the acid is not necessarily modified in the process (i.e., they think that one substance makes the other change in a chemical process) (29, 46).

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Teleology The naïve chemist assumes that states or processes in which a clear causal agent cannot be identified occur to satisfy some purpose or need (41). For example, students may think that spontaneous reactions occur because the system needs or wants to reduce its energy or increase its entropy. Atoms react with each other because they need to fill their valence shell or satisfy the octet rule (9).

Reasoning Heuristics Underlying Alternative Conceptions Many of the alternative conceptions in chemistry as described in the literature seem to result from the combination of the aforementioned presuppositions, and the use of fast and frugal heuristics in order to find and select information and make quick decisions and inferences. My analysis has allowed me to identify four main groups of such reasoning heuristics: association, reduction, fixation, and linear sequencing. Association Under this category I include heuristics commonly used in causal reasoning to identify the cause and effect and make predictions about the outcome of a process (12, 16–17, 33– 34). A wide variety of naïve students’ explanations seem to derive from the blind application of simple associative rules. I have classified this set of heuristics into five subgroups: 1. Covariance: The tendency to choose as the cause of a phenomenon the factor that is always present when the effect is produced (e.g., heat is the cause of most chemical reactions), and to assume that the larger, stronger, closer, or longer the duration of the cause, the larger the effect. Thus, students conclude that if you heat a body, its temperature always rises, and that the more electrons an atom has, the larger it is (9). Covariance also implies that associated variables in a system will vary proportionally when a change occurs (more A-more B, same A-same B). For example, if the strength of intermolecular forces between molecules depends on their polarity and total number of electrons, then the more electrons a molecule has (more A), the more polar it must be (more B). 2. Similarity: The tendency to assume that the cause and the effect in a causal relationship share similar features. Thus, for example, a more positive charge in an ion should result in a larger size. Combined with the assumption of “continuity”, the similarity heuristic leads students to project their macroscopic view of the world onto the microscopic models of matter. If the properties and behavior of atoms and molecules are the cause of the observed macroscopic phenomena, these invisible particles should share the features of the things we can observe (color, density, motion) (42, 43). 3. Proximity: The tendency to associate events that are close in space and time, giving particular importance to the presence of physical contact between the causal agent and its subject. Thus, many students believe that chemical reactions are always driven by the external intervention of an entity that comes in contact with the system (spark, catalyst) (44).

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4. Additivity: The tendency to think that effects are always linearly added and equally distributed among equivalent parts in a system. Thus, students may believe that the force exerted by the protons in an atomic nucleus is equally divided among the surrounding electrons, or that the total energy is equally spread among particles in a system (9). Linear additivity also leads students to believe that opposite effects should cancel out. For example, a mixture of equal amounts of an acid and a base is expected to be neutral (7). 5. Availability: The tendency to select relevant causes or variables based on their frequency or cognitive accessibility. Many students build explanations based on ideas that are not relevant to the problem, but are part of the repertoire of concepts with which they are more familiar or that first come to their minds in a given context.

Reduction The commonsense learner simplifies the analysis of any problem or situation, or the interpretation of any concept or phenomenon, by reducing the factors to be considered (12, 32). Two related strategies are: 1. One-reason decision-making: The tendency to assume that most properties or changes in a system depend on a single variable (i.e., there has to be a cause, but one cause is enough). For example, it is common for the students to think that atomic size depends only on the number of electrons in the system, or that the molecular polarity depends only on the polarity of the individual bonds (7, 47). 2. Undifferentiation: The tendency to use a single notion, which can have various labels, to refer to a cause, a property, or a process. Important variables or conditions in the definition of scientific concepts are neglected. Thus, many students believe that temperature is a measure of an objects’ heat or total energy, compounds are some sort of mixture, and electronegativity is a measure of polarity (18).

Fixation The commonsense learner applies principles, strategies, and interpretations in an automatic fashion, without considering other strategies or meanings and disregarding the nature of the problem (32). This results in: • Overgeneralization: The tendency to apply general principles and laws regardless of the particular characteristics of the system or the conditions under which a process occurs. Thus, students commonly think that all compounds are made of molecules, or the entropy in any process always increases (8–9). • Mental set: The tendency to approach the solution to a problem with the same strategy that worked previously for a different problem. This particular mindset frequently leads students down the wrong path and impedes problem solving. • Functional fixedness: The tendency to think that models and symbols have a unique and well-defined interpretation, and that they can normally be taken at face value. For example, students may believe that one can

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Research: Science and Education derive the geometry of a molecule by direct interpretation of its Lewis structure (7–9).

Linear Sequencing This is defined as the tendency to structure and analyze the evolution of a system as a linear chain of events (story or chronology) (12–13). Each variable is considered one at a time; there is always a preferred direction to the process (from beginning to end). For example, students believe that when a system reaches chemical equilibrium there is a cycle of forward and backward reactions whose effects cancel each other (6–7). Final Remarks List 2 illustrates how the basic assumptions about the nature and behavior of the natural world and the reasoning heuristics described in the previous section can be used to classify some common students’ alternative conceptions in chemistry.

It is not the intention of this work to propose that the complexity of students’ thinking in chemistry can be reduced to a limited number of assumptions and simple reasoning tools that are always applied in the same way, regardless of the context or the individual. The central goal of this research project is to derive a working model that can help chemistry teachers and instructors interpret students’ commonsense ideas in a more comprehensive way. In general, the inventory approach to the analysis of alternative conceptions in science tells us very little about our students’ thought processes and has limited predictive power. Functional models such as the one just described are more powerful tools because they shift our attention from the specific problems in a wide variety of topics, to the nature of the conceptual framework that constrains students’ ideas and explanations in a given domain—chemistry in this case. The analysis of alternative conceptions in chemistry from the perspective of the proposed commonsense explanatory framework should also help science teacher educators devise

List 2. Classification of Some Common Alternative Conceptions in Chemistry a Based on the Commonsense Explanatory Framework Empirical Assumptions

Alternative Conceptions

Continuity

• Atoms and molecules have macroscopic properties: they expand and lose weight when heated, have uniform densities and well-defined colors, are malleable, change their shape under pressure, etc.

Substantialism

• Heat has the properties of matter and behaves like a fluid. • Chemical bonds are material structures. • Electron clouds and shells are made of some kind of stuff.

Essentialism

• Rust is a type of iron. • It is impossible to extract carbon from a gas (CO2). • When you burn a substance, it is irretrievably destroyed.

Mechanical Causality

• A gas occupies all the space in a container because there are repulsive forces acting between particles. • The driving force in a chemical reaction is always an external agent. • Chemical reactions are caused by active agents acting on passive agents.

Teleology

• Substances react to minimize their energy. • Atoms share, give or take electrons to satisfy the octet rule. • Molecules take a certain shape to minimize bond repulsions.

Heuristics

Alternative Conceptions

Association

• Heat is the primal cause of all chemical reactions. • The more you heat a system, the higher its temperature will be. • When an acid and a base are mixed, the resulting solution is neutral.

Reduction

• Bond polarity determines molecular shape. • Total number of electrons determines atomic size. • Intermolecular forces are a type of energy.

Fixation

• The entropy of a system always increases. • Chemical changes are always irreversible. • All compounds are made of molecules.

Linear Sequencing

• At equilibrium, the forward reaction is completed before the reverse reaction commences. • In an electrochemical cell, electrons travel around the circuit causing a linear sequence of events. • In a reaction mechanism, one step has to be fully completed before the next one can begin.

aSee

refs 28–33.

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strategies that can help preservice chemistry teachers develop their pedagogical content knowledge. Most preservice and beginning teachers pay little attention to their students’ thinking when making planning, assessment, and instructional decisions. In part they do so because they do not know how to interpret their students’ answers, and have little idea of what to pay attention to or look for when analyzing student work. A model such as the one we derived can be useful to help them put the pieces of the puzzle together.

18. 19. 20. 21.

Acknowledgment

22.

This work was partially supported by the National Science Foundation (Grant No. DUE 0088046).

23. 24. 25.

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Commonsense Chemistry: A Model for Understanding Students

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