Hands-on practical work is central to elementary chemistry education, but students often complete experiments without understanding what those experiments show. Where this gap opens along a chemistry inquiry chain has stayed unclear. This study examined the performance of 873 Grade 5 and Grade 6 students from six Hangzhou schools, each of whom completed a one-on-one, hands-on chemistry task, comparing vitamin C content in different juices, scored against 55 behavioural checkpoints. Students observed iodine-starch and iodine-vitamin C reactions, designed and conducted a comparative experiment, controlled chemically relevant variables, attempted to produce interpretable colour evidence, and constructed a chemical explanation. Performance was strong on observation and variable control. However, 75.1% of students who had controlled variables still failed to produce an interpretable experimental result, the single largest dropout in the chain. Serial mediation analysis showed that observation predicted explanation mainly through variable control, and that experiment success partially mediated the link between variable control and explanation. Hierarchical regression showed that structural conditions such as school type and educational expectations, as well as classroom-level variables including discipline and teacher feedback, predicted explanation quality after Level 1 performance was controlled, while motivational variables did not. The findings empirically elaborate Millar's Level 1-to-Level 2 model by providing a task-specific diagnostic decomposition that locates the chain's narrowest point within Level 1, where controlled action must generate chemical evidence.
This narrative review describes progress and emerging trends in the pedagogical literature over the past decade around the integration of green and sustainable chemistry into undergraduate laboratory instruction. Grounded in...
This study investigated the prevalence, nature, and sources of alternative conceptions (misconceptions) in chemistry among high school students, focusing on six fundamental topics: Chemical Bonding, Acid–Base Chemistry, Redox Reactions, Solutions of Matter, Electrochemistry, and Chemical Thermodynamics. Employing a descriptive research design, data were collected from a total of 740 students across multiple secondary and preparatory schools using four-tier multiple-choice diagnostic tests (4TMCT), open-ended questionnaires, and interview protocols. The collected data was analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. Findings revealed varying rates of misconceptions across topics and grade levels. In chemical bonding, 13.5% of grade 10 and 21% of grade 12 students held misconceptions in the conceptual category of bond polarity, intermolecular forces, and the octet rule. Acid–base chemistry showed grade 10 and grade 12 students had misconceptions, with a pooled average of 12% across both grades. A total of 58.4% of Grade 12 students were found to be severely affected by misconceptions related to redox reactions. Solution chemistry revealed that an average of 43% of students held misconceptions. Electrochemistry misconceptions affected 44.44% of grade 12 students across different student samples, with particular difficulties in electrode processes, galvanic and electrolytic cells, and ion discharge predictions. Thermodynamics misconceptions affected students across concepts of enthalpy, heat, entropy, and system classifications, with an average medium-level misconception rate of 39%. Major sources of misconceptions across all topics included textbook figures and explanations, personal daily life experiences, teacher-related factors (instructional methods and English language proficiency), and knowledge carried forward from lower grades. The study concludes that chemistry misconceptions are persistent across grade levels and topics, with rates varying by concept complexity and grade level, highlighting the need for developmentally-appropriate, targeted instructional interventions to address these deeply-held alternative conceptions.
Emotional Intelligence (EI) has gained increasing attention across education research; however, its role within chemistry education remains conceptually diffuse and methodologically fragmented. This systematic review examines how EI and related affective constructs have been conceptualised, enacted, and investigated within chemistry education research between 2015 and 2025. Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, an initial search of the Scopus database yielded 292 records, which were reduced through screening and eligibility procedures to 32 articles. Studies were included if they examined emotional or affective processes within chemistry or closely related STEM learning contexts, while studies lacking disciplinary relevance or affective constructs were excluded. To reduce potential bias, screening and coding decisions were independently reviewed by a second researcher. Findings were analysed using a narrative thematic synthesis aligned with the review questions. Because EI-related research spans heterogeneous disciplinary contexts, a second-level disciplinary relevance appraisal was conducted, resulting in a final analytic dataset of 17 studies comprising 8 core chemistry–affective investigations and 9 conceptually relevant studies. A narrative thematic synthesis revealed four interrelated patterns: (1) EI is rarely adopted as an explicit theoretical framework in chemistry education, yet emotional competencies aligned with EI are structurally embedded in disciplinary learning practices; (2) affective demands emerge prominently in laboratory inquiry, representational reasoning, and socio-scientific instructional contexts; (3) existing research is shaped by methodological patterns that privilege self-report measures over process-oriented analyses of emotional dynamics; and (4) persistent conceptual gaps constrain the field's capacity to theorise emotions as constitutive of chemical meaning-making. By synthesising chemistry-specific and conceptually adjacent literature, this review advances an epistemic–affective perspective on EI in chemistry education and articulates an integrative agenda for future research. The findings highlight the need for explicit theorisation of EI grounded in disciplinary practices, methodological innovation capable of capturing situated emotional processes, and culturally responsive research that extends beyond predominantly Western contexts.
This study examines the effectiveness of authentic, scaffolded learning implemented through a digitally supported project-based approach in enhancing pre-service chemistry teachers' practical skills and self-efficacy within a cosmetic chemistry course. While project-based learning and digital tools are widely used, limited research has explored how their integration operates within domain-specific, applied contexts. Cosmetic chemistry, as a product-oriented and constraint-driven domain, offers distinct pedagogical potential for such integration. A quasi-experimental post-test-only control group design was conducted with 63 pre-service teachers. The experimental group engaged with a digitally scaffolded PjBL e-module, while the control group received conventional instruction. Practical skills were assessed through structured performance observation, and self-efficacy was measured using a validated Likert-scale questionnaire (r = 0.585-0.712; Cronbach's alpha = 0.852). Independent samples t-tests revealed significant differences in both practical skills and self-efficacy (p < 0.001), with large effect sizes (d = 1.24 and 1.35, respectively). The findings indicate that the intervention supported not only procedural performance but also evaluative and decision-making aspects of laboratory competence, alongside increased confidence in task execution. Importantly, the results demonstrate that cosmetic chemistry functions as a pedagogical domain that actively shapes learning through its product-oriented and constraint-based characteristics. This underscores the importance of aligning pedagogy, scaffolding, and domain-specific context in designing effective chemistry learning environments.
Mechanistic reasoning and systems thinking are widely recognized as central forms of scientific and engineering reasoning in chemistry and across STEM disciplines. However, research on their development in science courses has largely proceeded along parallel tracks, with limited attention to how their coordination can support the integration of scientific explanation, prediction, and design-oriented problem solving in classroom practice. This paper examines the epistemic relationship between mechanistic reasoning and systems thinking, arguing that these forms of reasoning are complementary but have different epistemic aims. Mechanistic reasoning supports explanations of how interactions among entities and processes produce observable effects. In contrast, systems thinking draws attention to how constraints, boundaries, feedback relationships, and system conditions shape those mechanisms. Building on existing frameworks in both traditions, I propose an instructional model that coordinates these perspectives through iterative movement between mechanistic exploration, systemic framing, and coordinated design and revision. Through this process, learners revisit shared representational elements with different epistemic purposes, progressively refining explanations, predictions, and design-oriented solutions. The model is illustrated through chemistry classroom examples that show how students can move between explaining how processes unfold and reasoning about how system conditions regulate, stabilize, or modify outcomes. The paper concludes by discussing the pedagogical implications, scope conditions, and instructional challenges involved in fostering coordinated mechanistic reasoning and systems thinking in chemistry and STEM education.
Scientific modeling is a core epistemic practice in chemistry, yet supporting learners in visualizing and making sense of abstract molecular structures and functions remains a challenge. While generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) offers new representational capabilities, it remains unclear how text-based prompt engineering intersects with established theories of scientific modeling. This study addresses this gap by reconceptualizing prompt engineering as a form of molecular modeling within AIMS, a chemistry-specific GenAI-supported molecular modeling environment. Through a qualitative case study, 11 secondary science teachers used GenAI embedded in AIMS to design novel sweetener molecules. Applying the CLEAR and REFINE analytic frameworks through the lens of Halloun's Modeling Theory, the study examined how participants translated disciplinary knowledge into iterative prompt-based molecular designs. The analysis concludes with three key findings. Participants' prompts functioned as externalized models that embedded assumptions about molecular structure-function relationships and design constraints within explicit chemical and theoretical requirements. As iterations progressed through model testing, reasoning shifted from broad appeals for scientific accuracy to precise, mechanistic constraints, including spatial arrangements and molecular properties. Revisions operated as controlled experiments where participants tightened or relaxed constraints to test the plausibility of GenAI outputs. These findings advance chemistry education by demonstrating that a chemistry-specific GenAI-supported modeling tool can function as a modeling assistant rather than an answer engine, scaffolding the core epistemic practices of construction, evaluation, and refinement in chemistry education. This reconceptualization positions prompt engineering as a source of written evidence for how learners articulated, tested, and revised chemical constraints, offering educators new ways to support and assess student modeling practices.
Reaction mechanisms are central to organic chemistry and function as explanatory models that link electron density and reactivity through electron flow, supporting the development of mechanistic reasoning. While chemistry education research has extensively documented students’ persistent difficulties with reaction mechanisms, comparatively little work has examined how instructors shape this learning through their instructional decisions, despite teaching and learning being fundamentally co-constructed processes. This work examines an experienced organic chemistry instructor's topic-specific pedagogical content knowledge (TSPCK) and its enactment in classroom practice. A qualitative case-study design ( N = 1) was used to develop a detailed account of instruction over a semester of introductory organic chemistry. Data sources included semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and instructional artifacts used to construct and develop the content representation (CoRe) and pedagogical and professional-experience repertoires (PaP-eRs). Classroom observations were guided by an enacted PCK framework focusing on curricular saliency, knowledge of student thinking, conceptual teaching strategies, and their integration. Findings indicate that the instructor's TSPCK is organized around three “big ideas”: (1) thinking at the atomic level, (2) mechanistic logic and generalizable patterns, and (3) representations as meaningful rather than decorative. PaP-eRs for each “big idea” were developed through exemplar teaching moments noted during classroom observations. For instructors, these findings emphasize the importance of aligning instructional goals, representations, and assessment practices. For researchers, this work demonstrates the value of using the CoRe and PaP-eR tools to capture both articulated and enacted dimensions of PCK.
Reimagining laboratory education in chemistry can help address demands to revitalize the undergraduate chemistry curriculum. In doing so, we can help students think like scientists and connect chemistry to other disciplines. Historically, undergraduate laboratories were taught through expository experiments coupled with traditional lab reports. However, these practices do not allow for constructive alignment of the curriculum, because the assessments target the cognitive domain of learning while the learning outcomes and class activities target the psychomotor domain. This lack of alignment also limits meaningful learning in the laboratory, at the heart of the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. This review summarises some recent innovations in course design and assessments for undergraduate level laboratory courses. Overall, we aspire to lower the activation energy barrier for educators to find and implement curricular reforms in laboratory education that are constructively aligned within their course. We structure this review under the major learning outcomes of laboratory instruction, defined by Reid and Shah: (1) linking cognitive and psychomotor domains; (2) developing practical skills; (3) designing experiments; and (4) improving transferable skills, which are further separated into scientific writing, oral communication, and peer learning.
The purpose of this systematic literature review is to analyze the use and impact of game-based approaches in secondary school chemistry education between 2014 and 2024. More specifically, it examines the impact of gamification, game-based learning, and serious games on student academic achievement, motivation, and engagement. Based on defined inclusion criteria, 52 peer-reviewed studies were identified through a structured database search. In the past decade, there has been a significant increase in research interest in this area. In a study of three approaches, game-based learning was the most commonly employed method. The three methods, game-based learning, gamification, and serious games, were found to have a positive impact on student outcomes, particularly in terms of motivation and engagement. Furthermore, positive effects were observed on learning outcomes, especially among students with lower prior knowledge or lower academic performance. This review provides an overview of recent research on game-based learning in chemistry education and highlights its growing relevance. In the future, researchers should investigate additional variables, such as self-efficacy, emotional responses, and problem-solving skills, and investigate how different student populations may benefit from game-based strategies. Practical implications for educators are also discussed, emphasizing the need for well-planned and context-sensitive implementation in the classroom.
Persistent difficulties in students’ ability to apply chemical knowledge across contexts suggest limits not to memory but of cognitive flexibility . This paper argues that such flexibility depends on conceptual reframing , understood as the capacity to reinterpret a phenomenon through alternative disciplinary lenses, which in this study take the form of distinct conceptual lenses within chemistry. Drawing on insights from cognitive flexibility theory, epistemic cognition, and philosophy of science, I propose that chemistry's inherently pluralistic structure requires learners to navigate among multiple legitimate modes of reasoning. I describe conceptual reframing as the cognitive process that enables this navigation and link it to mechanisms of context-sensitive activation and conceptual coordination. Building on existing ideas in science and chemistry education, I present curricular and pedagogical suggestions that emphasize recursive, phenomenon-based learning and metacognitive engagement with framing choices. Illustrative examples, such as the teaching of acid–base chemistry, demonstrate how instruction can foster conceptual reframing and knowledge transfer across contexts. Cultivating such pluralistic reasoning, I argue, is key to preparing learners to think adaptively, critically, and reflectively in a complex, interconnected world.
Understanding the particulate nature of matter (PNM) requires explaining macroscopic phenomena in terms of unobservable particle-level mechanisms, a challenge for most elementary teachers. This study examined elementary teachers' expressed mental models of PNM as they explained water's three states and constructed analogical representations for instruction. Merritt and Krajcik's (2013) framework was adopted as an analytic scale of propositional coordination complexity rather than as a developmental progression, and was refined through proposition-level analysis of particle reasoning. Six elementary teachers with varied professional backgrounds participated in systematic interviews involving phenomenon explanation and analogical modeling tasks across macroscopic, sub-microscopic, and transfer contexts. Analysis identified three recurring patterns of particle-based reasoning: a Basic Particle Model-Motion, a Basic Particle Model-Distance, and a Quasi-Scientific Model. These categories describe how teachers coordinated particle motion, spacing, and energy rather than representing developmental levels. Teachers' mental models were more consistent during phenomenon explanation than during analogical modeling, indicating task-specific instability when particle understanding had to be transformed into representational form. Analogical modeling functioned as a diagnostically distinct context that exposed coordination difficulties not visible in explanation tasks alone. Differences in cross-task consistency were not explained by professional background alone but appeared tentatively related to how teachers evaluated whether analogical representations preserved particle-level relations. These findings refine how elementary teachers' particle-based reasoning can be characterized and highlight representational and evaluative practices as potentially important components of modeling competence.
The persistent difficulties students exhibit with quantitative concepts in chemistry — Avogadro's law, the mole, stoichiometric ratios, and concentration — have been documented across four decades of empirical research, span...
Study strategy research has found that students' studying habits change over time, yet few reasons have been provided for why they change, especially from students themselves. This study harnessed qualitative methods to longitudinally examine how and why chemistry students change their study strategy usage from General Chemistry I to Organic Chemistry I, courses that previous research has identified as the first in which students reevaluate their study strategies. In a previously reported study, 16 General Chemistry I students were interviewed to capture the reasons behind their studying decisions; the present study focuses on those students who were re-interviewed in General Chemistry II (n = 6) and Organic Chemistry I (n = 5). Self-Regulated Learning, Cognitive Load Theory, and Desirable Difficulties were used as lenses to frame our understanding of why students changed their usage of studying strategies. Results indicate that students' perceptions of a strategy's ability to help them understand/learn and prepare for an assessment continue to play important roles in their decision-making. Instructors also continue to play a role in students' decisions based on their suggestions and the strategies provided. However, limited access to resources prevented some students from using specific strategies and often led them to seek alternatives. In addition, perceived content differences between General Chemistry and Organic Chemistry informed studying decisions and provided important insights into how students view chemistry as either math-focused (General Chemistry) or definition- and memorization-focused (Organic Chemistry). Implications aligned with students' specific reasons are presented to inform improvements in student studying decisions.
The use of Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) as a pedagogical tool for chemistry has gained momentum over the past decade. However, less is known about the specific dimensions of student interest that may or may not shift following IVR integration under authentic instructional constraints. This quasi-experimental pre-test post-test study examined the effects of smartphone-based IVR implementation on undergraduate chemistry interest and academic performance in a Caribbean university context. Two equivalent groups (Test, n = 58; Control, n = 58) completed the Chemistry Study Interest Questionnaire (C-SIQ) before and after the intervention, and a 60-item achievement test across six introductory topics. The Test group demonstrated significant gains in overall interest (p = 1.52 & times; 10(-2)) and in the dimension of intrinsic orientation (p = 4.47 & times; 10(-4)), while feelings-related and value-related valences did not change significantly (p > 0.05). Achievement outcomes favoured the Test group overall (p = 1.27 & times; 10(-21)). These findings are consistent with theoretical perspectives suggesting that IVR affordances may align more strongly with intrinsic motivational processes than affective or value-based components. The study contributes evidence from a resource-constrained Small Island Developing State (SIDS) context and highlights the importance of theoretical alignment and topic sensitivity in evaluating IVR integration in chemistry education.
This study investigates the impact of the methods of socio-scientific issues (SSI) and scaffolding on students' engagement and performance in chemistry education, with a focus on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). The research explores in a quasi-experimental intervention with a 2 & times; 2 pre-/post-design whether the integration of SSI, scaffolding, or a combination of both enhances students' learning outcomes in the context of selected Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This is being explored because it is still unclear to what extent ESD learning materials can be effectively implemented in everyday school life and what influence they have on both affective and cognitive learning factors. A total of 662 students from 35 classes in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, participated in a 6 week intervention. Using linear mixed effect models, the SSI and scaffolding groups showed significantly higher performance gains compared to the control group, while the students in the combination group did not profit more from the learning material. Engagement was examined both as an overall construct and across five subdimensions (cognitive, emotional, behavioural, agentic, and value-related). Analyses of engagement subscales revealed divergent developmental patterns. Cognitive and agentic engagement showed small but significant increases over time, with gains in cognitive engagement being positively related to performance gains. In contrast, emotional and behavioural engagement declined significantly across measurement occasions, while value-related engagement remained unchanged. These results contribute to the growing body of research on ESD in chemistry education by highlighting the potential of SSI and scaffolding to enhance affective and cognitive learning outcomes. This study underlines the need for further research to optimize the combination of differentiation approaches and explores their potential for fostering long-term performance and engagement.
Physical chemistry is a mathematically intensive course that requires students to integrate mathematical and conceptual understanding of abstract topics, with previous research exploring instruction on thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, and general approaches to the course. However, there has been limited work on the impact of instructors’ pedagogical decisions related to student understanding of the topic of entropy. Within a larger research study exploring the cognitive resources activated by instructors when teaching entropy, the current case study aims to investigate how chemistry instructors’ values, goals, and lived experiences inform their pedagogical decisions when teaching the topic of entropy. Using the refined consensus model of pedagogical content knowledge as a guiding framework, semi-structured interviews were conducted with undergraduate chemistry instructors from multiple institutions. Participants were asked to define and explain entropy, represent the topic through focused content questions, and describe their instructional approaches. Findings revealed that instructors primarily relied on their knowledge of students and pedagogical knowledge to guide instructional decisions related to their content knowledge, with minimal emphasis on and integration of assessment and curricular knowledge with the remaining professional knowledge bases. These results highlight the need for further research into the development of interconnections between the five knowledge bases of topic-specific pedagogical content knowledge to better inform instructional practices in undergraduate physical chemistry.
Chemistry learning can be conceptualized as a pluralistic discipline that involves the coordination of different domains. Two of these domains that students regularly interact with when enrolled in chemistry courses are the submicroscopic and macroscopic. Prior literature suggests that students’ understanding of the relationship between these domains is often fragmented, resulting in varying explanations for macroscopic phenomena. Often times, these alternative explanations are simply categorized as incorrect. However, this dichotomous framing risks oversimplifying how students navigate the varying domains of chemistry and how the salient features within each domain might impact the way in which students draw on learned chemical principles. This study adopts a resources perspective that traces how students draw upon, adapt, and reconstruct their conceptual resources across tasks that cue students toward submicroscopic explanations and tasks that present students with macroscopic observations. To capture how students identify relevant resources within each of these task types, data were collected from ten participants through 60 minute semi-structured interviews. Each interview consisted of two sections: macroscopic tasks based on a video of an S N 1 laboratory experiment, and submicroscopic-cued tasks using bond-line structures of reagents. Across both task types, participants were asked to explain reaction outcomes and justify the chemical principles guiding their conclusions. Findings revealed that macroscopic cues significantly shaped how students evaluated reaction principles, even when drawing on the same conceptual resources used in the submicroscopic cued tasks. Additionally, students often drew on reactionary mnemonics learned in their lectures that provided minimal interpretative utility when viewing macroscopic observations. Consequently, reasoning unfolded as task-dependent, with varying degrees of parallel resource implementation across the domains. These results underscore the need for instructional designs that afford connections between the domains of chemistry, through prioritizing sensemaking over recall to encourage conceptual flexibility.
Gender comparisons of experimental self-efficacy (ESE) in chemistry laboratories are typically based on mean scores, which do not reveal how ESE beliefs are organised as an interconnected system. A cross-sectional sample of 655 Malaysian pre-university chemistry students (179 male; 476 female) completed a 12-item ESE measure spanning conceptual understanding, procedural complexity, laboratory hazards, and resource sufficiency. Measurement invariance was examined using multi-group CFA; configural invariance was supported, with borderline evidence for full metric invariance, so gender comparisons are interpreted cautiously as patterns under this operationalisation. Gender-specific networks were estimated using regularised Gaussian graphical models; strength centrality and permutation-based network comparison tests (NCTs) were used to evaluate gender differences, with bootstrap and case-dropping analyses assessing robustness. Both networks were domain-clustered, with strongest within-domain connections and relatively limited cross-domain links. Descriptively, conceptual understanding (item 3), “I am confident that I understand the chemical processes in the experiment,” was the most central node in the female network, whereas laboratory hazards (item 2), “I am confident of working in the laboratory without chemical spillage,” was the most central node in the male network; however, NCT indicated no differences in network structure or global strength, and no individual edges or centralities differed significantly. Overall, ESE showed similar network organisation across gender in this context. The identified clusters and cross-domain links, particularly those involving conceptual sense-making, provide hypotheses for future research on laboratory support rather than direct evidence of instructional effects.
