Contextualizing Organic Chemistry Students' Reasoning in Their Learning Experiences

Abstract

Historically, organic chemistry courses have been high-stress, high-stakes learning environments. Chemistry education studies have explored organic chemistry students’ learning, establishing that chemical reasoning is a difficult, but an effective, chemical practice. Hence, students’ reasoning has become a critical learning objective. Typically, studies have designated that learning is a production between the students and the content. However, learning includes the students, the instructors, the learning materials (e.g., activities and assignments), the learning environment (e.g., traditional and transformed curricula), and the learning space (e.g., in-person, online, synchronous, or asynchronous). Therefore, this dissertation designates that learning is a partnership between the students, the graduate teaching assistants (GTAs), the faculty instructors, and the educational researchers and that the “learning experience” denotes this partnership and how the partnership shapes the learning materials’ design, implementation, and enactment and the learning objective. Herein, this dissertation explores how learning materials’ design, implementation, and enactment (i.e., the learning experience) shapes students’ reasoning (i.e., the learning objective).

This dissertation is guided by that question and scaffolded by diverse research questions. First, Chapter 2 emphasizes how students’ classroom, research, and instruction experiences shape their reasoning and asks: (1) How do organic chemistry students use reaction mechanisms? (2) How do organic chemistry students use reaction coordinate diagrams? and (3) How do organic chemistry students translate between reaction mechanism and reaction coordinate diagrams? Next, Chapter 3 emphasizes how a case-comparison activity’s design and implementation shape students’ reasoning and asks: (1) What lines of reasoning are second-semester organic chemistry students activating when they compare two substitution reaction mechanisms? and (2) How are second-semester organic chemistry students weighing lines of reasoning when they compare two substitution reaction mechanisms? Then, Chapter 4 emphasizes how a Writing-to-Learn assignment’s design and implementation shape students’ reasoning and asks: (1) How does the Wittig WTL assignment's rhetorical aspects elicit second-semester organic chemistry students’ elaborations? and (2) How do second-semester organic chemistry students’ elaborations change when the Wittig WTL assignment's rhetorical aspects change? Finally, Chapter 5 emphasizes how GTAs’ enactment shapes students’ reasoning and asks: (1) How do chemistry GTAs attend to students’ learning during the case-comparison activity, and how do they interpret, shape, and respond to what they attend to? and (2) How does chemistry GTAs’ framing influence their teacher noticing? This dissertation is guided by a sociocultural perspective and is grounded by diverse theoretical frameworks, including a framework of representational competence, a framework of resources, the cognitive theory of writing, and a framework of teacher noticing. Additionally, this dissertation is guided by qualitative methods and analyzes diverse data, including interviews, observations, and artifacts.

Chapter 2 finds that classroom, research, and instruction experiences develop undergraduate and graduate students’ reasoning. Considering undergraduate students’ classroom experiences, Chapter 3 finds that the scaffolded case-comparison activity supports undergraduate students’ reasoning, and Chapter 4 finds that the scaffolded Writing-to-Learn assignment supports undergraduate students’ reasoning. Together, these findings motivate research and instruction designing and implementing inquiry-based, cooperative-learning, and meaningful-learning experiences. Considering graduate students’ instruction experiences, Chapter 5 finds that GTAs enact the cooperative-learning case-comparison activity, they support undergraduate students’ reasoning, but they also support undergraduate students’ affective learning experiences. This finding motivates research, instruction, and institutions designing and implementing pedological professional development opportunities. This dissertation provides implications in order to support graduate students’ reasoning and, thus, to support undergraduate students’ reasoning.