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Introduction: Research and practice in chemical education in advanced

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Article in Chemistry Education Research and Practice · April 2008

DOI: 10.1039/b806596a

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INTRODUCTION www.rsc.org/cerp | Chemistry Education Research and Practice

Research and practice in chemical education in advanced courses

George M. Bodner and Gabriela Weaver
Received 14th April 2008
DOI: 10.1039/b000000x

For many years, chemical education research was done by individuals involved in pre-service
teacher training and in-service teacher workshops. As a result, it often focused on the problems
faced by elementary- and secondary-school students encountering chemistry topics for the first
time. Because a large fraction of the students enrolled in chemistry courses at the tertiary level can
be found in first-year courses, it is not surprising that as research expanded to studies of college
and university students, it began by looking at the experiences of students in introductory courses.
Recent years have seen a significant increase in the number of research studies that focus on
students in upper-level courses at the undergraduate and graduate level. This is an important
development because of the different cognitive and pedagogical challenges that are encountered in
‘advanced’ courses. This special issue of CERP is therefore devoted to studies that have the
potential of producing changes in the way upper-level courses are taught that are equivalent to the
changes that research on the teaching and learning of chemistry by high-school and introductory
level students has had on the way courses for these students are being taught.

Keywords: organic chemisry, biochemistry, physical chemistry, chemical education research

Introduction on which the paper focused. The second row for each year
excludes articles that are not ‘educational research’ in the
A fundamental change has occurred in research on the
broadest sense of the word. The first column includes papers
teaching and learning of chemistry over a period of twenty-
that address cognitive issues of learning that are not related to
five years. A significant fraction of the early work (e.g.
a particular level. The second, third and fourth columns report
Gorodetsky and Hoz, 1980; Gabel and Sherwood, 1984; Gabel
the number of articles that focus on pre-college students or
et al, 1984; Yarroch, 1985) focused almost exclusively on
teachers, first-year undergraduate students, and students
high-school students. With time, the number of papers that
enrolled in advanced courses, respectively. The last column
dealt with research on college-age students increased (e.g.
reports the percentage of the total number of articles that
Bodner and McMillen, 1986; Herron and Greenbowe, 1986;
focused on advanced courses. Because the data in Table 1
Carter, et al., 1987; Nurrenbern and Pickering, 1987; Sawrey,
represent nothing more than a snapshot at two ends of a
1990; Nakhleh, 1993; Phelps, 1996). Most of this work,
decade, we will not over-interpret the numbers. It is worth
however, concentrated on students enrolled in the first-year
noting, however, that the percentage of articles that report
general chemistry course. Papers eventually appeared that
studies based on advanced courses is not high, even in recent
described work with students enrolled in organic chemistry
years.
courses at the undergraduate (e.g. Pribyl and Bodner, 1987;
Johnson, 1990) and graduate level (Bowen and Bodner, 1991).
Research on organic chemistry and biochemistry
Journals that published research in science education at that
time were less receptive, however, to this type of work than to There has never been a shortage of papers that describe new
studies that focused on first-year or pre-college issues. approaches to the teaching of subjects such as organic
Ultimately, work on research related to more advanced chemistry (e.g., Bradley et al., 2002; Tien et al., 2002). Until
undergraduate courses began to appear (e.g. Moore and recently, however, the number of papers that detailed the
Schwenz, 1992; Zielinski, 1995; Towns and Grant, 1997; results of research on the learning of organic chemistry has
Towns et al., 1998; Pentecost and James, 2000). While such been relatively small. A few years ago, research based on the
research is published regularly today, its frequency is still analysis of students’ explanations of their answers to exam
much lower than for work related to first-year courses. Table questions (Bodner and Domin, 2000) was used to suggest a
1 shows the results of a search using the ERIC database fundamental difference between what instructors write on the
(Educational Resources Information Center) for articles for blackboard when they give lectures on organic chemistry and
the years 1995 and 2005 in which the word ‘chemistry’ what their students write in the lecture notes they take. The
appears in the title. The first row for each year shows the total instructor writes symbols that represent a physical reality,
number of articles for that year sorted by the academic level whereas students often write letters and numbers and lines
that are not symbols because they have no physical meaning
Department of Chemistry, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, for the students. A similar phenomenon has been seen in a
USA, E-mail: gmbodner@purdue.edu and gweaver@purdue.edu
study of graduate students (Bhattacharyya and Bodner, 2005),
which concluded that the curved arrows used in the arrow-

This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2008 Chem. Educ. Res. Pract., 2008, 9, 81-83 | 81
Table 1 Analysis of ERIC citations in 1995 and 2995

Academic level on which article focuses

pre-college students 1st year
year type of article chemistry in general and/or teachers undergraduate advanced % advanced
1995 All 9 19 21 11 18%
Research 8 13 16 8 18%
2005 All 22 25 23 29 29%
Research 9 20 16 3 6%

pushing formalism are not ‘symbols’ for the graduate students physical chemistry is the traditional reliance on advanced
because “... they did not symbolize anything in the students’ mathematics as the primary means to both explain concepts
minds.” and solve problems in physical chemistry. It has been
One of the early experiments with graduate students recognized that students could succeed in this course by
(Bowen and Bodner, 1991) noted that they rarely, if ever, having very good mathematics skills (Hahn and Polik, 2004)
worried about the viability of the organic syntheses they were and logical thinking skills (Nicoll and Francisco, 2001),
proposing from the perspective of what actually occurs in the without necessarily understanding the chemical concepts nor,
laboratory. Subsequent work (Bhattacharyya et al., 2004) has in fact, needing to think very much at all about the chemical
suggested that graduate students approach organic synthesis as concepts. Therefore, much of the work in physical chemistry
if it was a paper-and-pencil exercise that has little (if any) research has looked at ways to enhance students’
connection to their experience in the laboratory. understanding of the chemical concepts and to create
A series of papers on the teaching and learning of organic conceptual links between physical chemistry and other
chemistry appeared at the turn of the century that studied chemistry knowledge that students have (Towns et al., 1998;
factors that influence student performance in organic Jennings et al., 2007). To this end, many researchers have also
chemistry courses (Black and Deci, 2000), ways of measuring explored teaching approaches specific to physical chemistry
conceptual change in organic chemistry (Nash, et al., 2000), that will provide increased engagement in the learning process
the use of knowledge space theory to map students thought (e.g. Zielinski, 1995; Deckert et al., 1998; Pentecost and
patterns (Taagepera and Noori, 2000), the validity of the James, 2000; Hinde and Kovak, 2001). A qualitative research
Johnstone-ElBanna model of problem solving when applied to study of undergraduate chemistry and physics students
organic synthesis problems (Tsaparlis and Angelopoulos, enrolled in introductory quantum mechanics courses (Gardner
2000), and gender differences in both cognitive and and Bodner, 2007) noted that many of the problems students
noncognitive factors related to achievement in organic encounter when learning quantum mechanics are not the result
chemistry (Turner and Lindsay, 2000). More recent work has of a misunderstanding of the concepts being taught; they are
involved studies of distance-education as an alternative the result of employing non-productive strategies while
approach to teaching organic chemistry (Kurtz and Holden, studying and doing homework.
2001), students’ understanding of hydrogen bonding The results of studies of teaching and learning in inorganic
(Henderleiter et al., 2001), the application of the Structure of and analytical chemistry have recently begun to appear.
Observed Learning Outcomes (SOLO) taxonomy for Particular attention has been paid to student responses to
evaluating student learning in the two-semester organic computer-based learning environments that simulate classical
sequence (Hodges and Harvey, 2003), and the use of model- quantitative and qualitative analysis (Josephsen and
eliciting activities to probe the mental models of organic Kristensen, 2006) and the use of study packs supported by on-
chemistry graduate students (Bhattacharyya, 2006). line formative assessment to replace lectures in an inorganic
Although the journal Biochemistry and Molecular Biology chemistry module (Williams et al., 2008).
Education is in its 36th year of publication, the vast majority
of the papers in that journal focus on approaches to the Conclusion
teaching of biochemistry (e.g., Minderhout and Loertsche,
2007). Research on the learning of biochemistry has included Inasmuch as Chemistry Education Research and Practice has
studies of student difficulties with the interpretation of played an important role in reporting research on the teaching
textbook diagrams (Schönborn et al., 2002), student and learning of chemistry at the tertiary level in courses
understanding of the concept of pH (Watters and Watters, beyond general chemistry, we proposed the theme of Research
2006), and a series of papers on the use of analogies by and Practice in Chemical Education in Advanced Courses
instructors in biochemistry classes (Orgill and Bodner, 2004), when asked to edit a special issue of this journal. The call for
by authors in textbooks (Orgill and Bodner, 2006), and by papers asked for contributions that dealt with the learning of
biochemistry students (Orgill and Bodner, 2007). chemistry in advanced or upper level courses for either
undergraduate or graduate students across the spectrum of
majors that enroll in these courses. It also asked for papers
Research on analytical, inorganic and physical
that described the incorporation of non-traditional modes of
chemistry
instruction and inquiry-based instruction in advanced or
A primary stumbling block in the learning and teaching of upper-level courses. The result was a series of eleven papers

82 | Chem. Educ. Res. Pract., 2008, 9, 81–83 This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2008
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Johnson W. A., (1990), The year-long first course in organic chemistry, J.
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