期刊名称：Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science & Technology Education
印刷版ISSN：1305-8223
电子版ISSN：1305-8223
出版年度：2019
卷号：15
期号：8
页码：1-16
DOI：10.29333/ejmste/106231
出版社：Pamukkale Univ Dept Sci Education
摘要：Success in chemistry requires not only the ability to recruit prior knowledge but also
the ability to establish strong connections between new and existing concepts to form
knowledge clusters around core principles. How these knowledge structures are
organized can be used to understand the relationships between concepts within a
student’s mind. 618 undergraduate students in a general chemistry course participated
in this study at a US institution. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect,
if any, that prior knowledge in chemistry and mathematics and gender have on the
formation of students’ knowledge structures. In addition, the structures were analyzed
to identify the hidden connections between macroscopic, submicroscopic, and
symbolic representations of chemical knowledge. To visualize these structures, a word
association test (WAT) was created to determine concept relatedness. Student
response data was then transformed into a series of distances by a computer program
called JPathfinder, which created visual representations of the knowledge structures in
the Gephi platform. The meaning and implications of these structures were discussed
to provide ideas for teaching interventions that focus on weakly associated basic
general chemistry concepts. The potential uses of WAT were also shared to help
educators identify student misconceptions.
