Evaluating the Effectiveness of Organic Chemistry Textbooks for Promoting Representational Competence

The goal of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of organic chemistrytextbooks in developing student representational competence skills with eight representationsof molecular structure (Lewis structures, Kekule??structures, condensed structures, electrostaticpotential maps, skeletal structures, dash-wedge diagrams, Newman projections, and chairconformations). Five commonly used organic chemistry textbooks in the United States weredeductively coded with Kozma and Russell's representational competence framework. Theanalyses focused on identifying representational competence skills that are taught for each typeof representation, as well as how consistently these skills are taught across text, workedexamples, and practice problems within each textbook. We found that more representationalcompetence skills are taught for some representations rather than others. In addition, allfivetextbooks may promote foundational representational competence skills, such as the ability tointerpret, translate, and generate representations, but may fail to support learners in developinghigher-level metarepresentational skills. Generally, more skills are taught in text, in comparisonto the number of skills that are scaffolded in worked examples and assessed in practice problems. This means that the textbooksintroduce various skills but do not provide as much support for students to develop and practice these skills. Finally, workedexamples of some textbooks provide much more scaffolded explanations than others, allowing for a different amount of skill-building support