Chemistry Education Research and Practice最新文献

This exploratory qualitative study examines the chemistry-related experiences that individuals at different academic stages describe as influential to their current academic and professional positioning within chemistry. Rather than eliciting predefined categories of experiences, participants were invited to share the moments, interactions, and contexts they deemed important, which were primarily situated within chemistry-related settings. Using these participant-selected narratives as the primary data source, transcripts were analyzed with a coding framework that characterized each experience by affective tone (positive, negative, neutral), role positioning (being a student or being a professional), and emergent experience type (curricular, co-curricular, extracurricular). Analysis revealed patterned differences in how participants described influential chemistry experiences across contexts, affective framings, and role positioning. Curricular experiences were more prominently described using frustration, challenge, or neutrality and were often framed through a student role, whereas co-curricular experiences, such as research and internships, were associated with mixed affective tones of uncertainty and empowerment and relatively more professional positioning. Extracurricular experiences were primarily described as sites of social connection and emotional support, particularly in early undergraduate stages, supporting persistence within coursework rather than disciplinary contribution. Taken together, these analyses trace how affective, contextual, and positional dimensions come together in the chemistry experiences participants interpreted as significant. By comparing participants within different academic stages, the study examines how chemistry-related experiences are framed as influential and highlight the importance of designing learning environments that account for differences in how participants engage with, frame, and prioritize chemistry-related experiences.

This study investigates the perceptions, alternative conceptions, and knowledge structures of senior pre-service chemistry teachers regarding radiation and radioactivity prior to their enrollment in a nuclear chemistry course. A phenomenographic design was employed to reveal the qualitatively different ways in which these concepts are perceived and conceptualized. The phenomenographic analysis was conducted in three stages to identify the key issues within participants’ perceptions and to organize the qualitative variation in these perceptions into hierarchically related categories. These categories were then secondarily interpreted to identify alternative conceptions and to map the underlying knowledge structures that illustrate how fundamental nuclear chemistry concepts are structurally interconnected within participants’ mental frameworks. At the end of the study, SPSCTs’ perceptions of radiation were grouped into five main issues: (1) ray, (2) emission of ray, (3) wave, (4) energy, and (5) emission of energy; while their perceptions of radioactivity were grouped into six main issues: (1) emission of radiation, (2) decomposition, (3) radiation, (4) energy, (5) reaction, and (6) matter. Energy emerged as the only common issue across both outcome spaces, indicating that senior pre-service chemistry teachers fundamentally associate both phenomena with energy. At the same time, radioactivity was primarily conceptualized as a process grounded in nuclear instability and material transformation, yet only partially distinguished from the physical phenomena of radiation. The findings further indicate persistent alternative conceptions among senior pre-service chemistry teachers, including the interchangeable use of radiation and radioactivity, the belief that all forms of radiation are harmful, and the alternative conception that nuclear reactions are a type of chemical reaction. These results underscore the need for targeted instructional strategies in teacher education programs to address structurally embedded conceptual confusions before formal nuclear chemistry instruction begins.

Women faculty remain underrepresented in chemistry, reflecting persistent challenges in recruitment, retention, and career advancement. While much of the existing research has centered on the experiences of graduate students and trainees, comparatively less attention has been given to the perspectives of those already in faculty roles. This study examines the systemic barriers and supports that influence the retention, advancement, and success of women faculty in academia. Using qualitative data from in-depth interviews, the analysis identifies eight key themes: (1) formative influences and early motivations, (2) career entry and evolution: decisions and turning points, (3) navigating academic pathways: personal decisions and reflections, (4) mentorship as a double-edged sword. (5) work-life integration and care responsibilities, (6) institutional barriers and systemic inequities, (7) policy awareness and implementation gaps, and (8) supports enabling career sustainability. These themes reveal a complex interplay of personal agency, structural barriers, and institutional supports. While participants described persistent challenges such as inequitable policies, caregiving burdens, and limited advancement opportunities, they also highlighted the importance of mentorship, flexibility, and supportive networks. The findings suggest that meaningful progress toward gender equity in academia requires institutions to address systemic gaps while strengthening mechanisms that sustain women faculty throughout their careers.

Systems thinking (ST) has been adopted in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) as an approach that enables learners to analyse complexity, interdependence, and multiple dimensions of sustainability issues. This paper reports a participatory action research study that developed a sequence of five consecutive ESD-integrated chemistry lessons through the ST approach and investigated its impact on the development of students’ ST competence. The lessons, developed based on an adapted educational framework for teaching chemistry using a ST approach and the learning outcomes (LOs) of the local existing curriculum, were tested with 44 ninth-graders at a lower secondary school in Vietnam. Students’ ST competence was assessed using a one-way repeated measures design, in which both quantitative and qualitative data were collected through written tests with open-ended questions and anecdotal records, using a methodological triangulation approach. Data from written tests were analysed using one-way ANOVA and descriptive statistics, while data from the anecdotal records were examined through deductive qualitative content analysis. The results showed a positive trend in the development of most students’ ST skills (STS) across the five lessons, but the developmental trajectories differed across STS. Notably, the data revealed that strict alignment with the mandatory LOs may have constrained the development of certain STS. The results suggested that initiatives integrating chemistry lessons with ESD should continue to be implemented in other countries’ national curricula, with particular attention to implementation in the form of lesson sequences, to evaluate their alignment with mandatory LOs, and to guide the use of ST in chemistry education and ensure coherence, continuity, and transformative impact.

Chemistry is frequently perceived as a challenging discipline, placing students at high risk of learning burnout, which significantly undermines their academic performance and well-being. However, a few studies have integrated behavioral (learning engagement) and cognitive (attributions and self-efficacy) perspectives to investigate the predictive relationships underlying chemistry learning burnout. Therefore, this study aims to explore the links between these variables and students’ chemistry learning burnout. This research employed a sample of 1712 students (10th and 11th graders) from 8 high schools in China. After assessing all relevant variables, direct and indirect pathways were examined through structural equation modelling (SEM). The findings indicated that (1) internal/external attributions in chemistry, chemistry self-efficacy, and chemistry learning engagement all showed significant negative relationships with students’ chemistry learning burnout; (2) both (a) chemistry self-efficacy and (b) chemistry learning engagement served as significant mediators in the relationship between internal/external attributions in chemistry and chemistry learning burnout; and (3) the chain mediating roles of (a) chemistry self-efficacy and (b) chemistry learning engagement were suggested in the link between internal/external attributions in chemistry and chemistry learning burnout. These findings advance the theoretical understanding of students’ learning burnout in challenging science subjects by providing an integrated cognitive-behavioral framework. Practically, these findings provide a basis for chemistry educators and curriculum designers to implement targeted interventions that prioritize adaptive attributional training and the strengthening of psychological resources to mitigate burnout. Finally, we noted the study's limitations as well as future research directions.

This study examined how three affective variables (academic mindset entity beliefs, impostor syndrome, and sense of belonging) interrelate and influence performance in Organic Chemistry II, a second-year STEM course. Data were collected from students at a large, public, research-intensive university (N = 201), with performance measured by midterm average and a cumulative final exam score, controlling for prior knowledge from Organic Chemistry I. Structural equation modeling with path analysis was used to evaluate direct and mediated pathways among affective variables and performance. Results indicated that impostor syndrome and academic mindset directly predicted exam performance, while belonging exerted an indirect effect through impostor syndrome. Parallel mediation analyses further showed that academic mindset influenced achievement through two distinct pathways: impostor syndrome and prior knowledge. Students endorsing stronger fixed-ability beliefs reported higher impostor scores and lower prior knowledge, both negatively associated with exam scores. These results underscore that affective factors operate through interconnected cognitive and emotional mechanisms and persist beyond first-year coursework. Even after multiple semesters of college-level science, students entered Organic Chemistry II with self-doubt, fixed beliefs, or lower belonging, which are characteristics that undermine success. The persistence of these challenges into Organic Chemistry II highlights the need for sustained attention to affective dimensions in STEM education. Instructional strategies that normalize challenge, promote growth-oriented beliefs, and foster inclusive classroom communities are essential for reducing impostor-related barriers and supporting persistence. Addressing these affective factors alongside conceptual learning is critical for improving achievement and persistence in STEM.

With rapid technological advancements and the creation of innovative digital tools, virtual laboratory (VTL) experiences are being integrated into undergraduate chemistry curricula. Using a four-week counterbalanced design with 70 first-year college students, this study aimed to demonstrate how prior chemistry knowledge, assessed by a general chemistry exam, predicted student performance in traditional hands-on laboratory (HOL) and VTL experiments. The results of t-test analyses revealed similar overall performance between the HOL and VTL environments. However, the results of a MANOVA showed a differential effect: VTLs were more effective for students demonstrating a high level of prior chemistry knowledge, whereas no significant difference was observed for students with a low level of prior knowledge. Furthermore, prior knowledge explained 35% of the variance in high level knowledge students’ VTL performance, indicating its strong predictive power for their laboratory success. These results suggest that although VTLs may not harm science achievement, they could inadvertently widen the performance gap between high-achieving and low-achieving students. Accordingly, this study underscores the importance of utilizing predictor variables, such as prior chemistry knowledge, to better understand and optimize the effectiveness of HOL and VTL experiments.

Organic chemistry courses are often viewed as “weed-out” courses, with success traditionally measured by examination performance. However, learning extends beyond cognition as it is also influenced by students’ interactions with their peers and instructors. Affective and social dimensions of the learning environment should also be considered for supporting meaningful engagement with organic chemistry content. In this study, a flipped, peer-led team-learning (PLTL) pedagogical strategy was implemented in the second semester of a yearlong postsecondary organic chemistry course. Using the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework, we explored how students’ perceptions of their social, cognitive, and teaching presence in the course varied across the semester, by course grade, and admit type (first-time-in-college and transfer). Confirmatory factor analysis and measurement invariance testing supported the validity of the data collected by the CoI instrument, and nonparametric analyses were used to assess group-level differences. Results indicate that perceptions of all CoI components increased across the organic chemistry course. Students that earned higher course grades reported stronger perceptions of social and cognitive presence, and transfer students were found to report comparable perceptions of the CoI components to their first-time-in-college peers. Overall, the flipped, PLTL course pedagogical strategy cultivated a supportive and cohesive learning environment of organic chemistry over time and across student groups. These results underscore the value of intentionally structured, collaborative environments in challenging gateway chemistry courses and the need to measure affective and social dimensions of learning alongside cognitive outcomes to more fully capture the mechanisms by which course structures influence the learning experience.

Studies have shown that students often struggle to solve quantitative science problems because they fail to make connections between mathematical equations and associated scientific phenomena. This struggle has been attributed to instructors providing limited sensemaking opportunities that connect science and mathematics sensemaking. Our prior research on college instructors teaching population growth shows that the types of sensemaking elicited varied and were organized in different ways. This case study extends the research by exploring sensemaking opportunities about mathematical equations provided by three instructors teaching Gibbs free energy. This study also examines different levels of connection between sensemaking types within and across the science and mathematics dimensions and analyzes factors (i.e., pedagogical approaches, equation types) that might shape the types of sensemaking that were provided. The Sci-Math Sensemaking Framework was used to identify sensemaking opportunities provided by three instructors during the lessons and a comparative case study approach was employed. Findings showed that while each instructor provided both science and mathematics sensemaking opportunities, they had distinct ways of sequencing their sensemaking even when teaching the same scientific phenomenon using mathematical equations. Mathematics sensemaking was mostly presented separately from science sensemaking, with only a few instances of connected sensemaking occurring in instructors’ lessons, albeit at varying levels. When instructors expose students to connected science and mathematics sensemaking, they model for students how to use resources from two different disciplines to understand scientific concepts or solve quantitative problems. We provide evidence to show that levels of connection between sensemaking types within science and mathematics dimensions reflect distinct approaches to developing more robust scientific explanations or to working with equations. Based on these case studies, we suggest that instructors’ equation choices and pedagogical approaches support specific types of sensemaking and levels of connection between sensemaking opportunities.

The design of assessments shapes what we learn about students’ conceptual understanding. In the context of chemistry education, visual representations are important components of learning and assessment. To examine the role of representations in assessing students’ reasoning about chemical and physical changes, we developed two multiple choice questionnaires: one that represents the choice options in verbal form and one that represents isomorphic options – in pictures. The questionnaires included a second-tier rating scale of the questions’ general comprehensibility and the clarity of the pictures. The questionnaires were distributed among 374 eighth graders in two phases. In the first phase we found that on average, students performed slightly better on the verbal version, and some verbal items were significantly easier than their visual counterparts, but one item showed the opposite trend. Interviews revealed that visual representations exposed a wider range of ideas among respondents, and in some cases, created confusion. The second phase focused on the visual version and revealed significant positive correlations between clarity judgements and performance in questions with visuals such as graphs that represent the change in mass and molecular structures that represent the chemical formula, and no correlations on others. The analysis of the interviews, together with the clarity ratings, indicates that in these questions, visuals can be conceived as an additional layer of challenge, while other questions entail conceptual misunderstandings that are either exposed or concealed by cues in the external, visual layer.