Didaktik der Chemie

The focus of my PhD research is on understanding knowledge use and learning in physical chemistry at university level. For university students, PC is a notorious difficult subject to learn. This is evident by the extensive literature documenting naïve conceptions. However, little is known about the mental processes leading to their expression (Cooper & Stowe, 2018). Using a fine-grained Knowledge Analysis (DiSessa et al., 2016) I aim to reconstruct this mental process using clinical interviews for the specific context of colligative properties, making visible real time conceptual change.

These colligative properties can be explained as emerging from the complex interactions of many particles in a multi particle system (Talanquer, 2010). Emergence, emergent properties, and the difficult to mentally process and reason about them are discussed as one of the causes for many different naïve conceptions and learning difficulties known in chemistry. Explaining those properties, resulting from complex multi particle interactions, one needs to consider complex system behaviour, resulting in specific forms of reasoning. This, sometimes also called emergent thinking, is considered not intuitive and explicit learning is needed (Chi, 2023).

Through contrasting the knowledge use of participants with different knowledge systems I contribute insight in the development and usage of an (established) knowledge system through the comparison of novices’ and experts’ use of conceptual and epistemological knowledge when explaining said phenomenon, representing learning in chemistry.