Gabriela Szteinberg

Como continuación del documento anterior, en el que fue introducido y explicado el concepto de identidad química, se procede a presentar en este los elementos que se utilizan para colectar y analizar entrevistas cognitivas y los resultados, las implicaciones y las conclusiones de un estudio de comparación cultural entre estudiantes de una universidad en Costa Rica y otra en Estados Unidos. También se marcan las diferencias curriculares entre los dos países investigados. Los resultados de la investigación indican, tentativamente, la manera de razonar sobre la identidad química, lo que además se puede usar como parte del contexto de razonar sobre los beneficios, los costos y los riesgos y las relaciones entre la estructura y las propiedades en la química. Este trabajo muestra la diversidad del pensamiento sobre la identidad química en países con diferentes currículos, con poblaciones estudiantiles de diferentes tamaños y que presentan contextos de diferente carácter geográfico, cultural y social, lo que fortalece la validación de la progresión de aprendizaje hipotética.

El valor del concepto de sustancia, tanto como construcción teórica y fenomenológica como macroscópica, debe ser considerado en el aprendizaje de la química. Este trabajo define una idea principal en química —identidad química— que consiste en las sugerencias, conocimientos y prácticas de trabajo de los químicos para saber si las sustancias químicas son diferentes o iguales entre sí. Dentro de una colaboración entre una universidad en los Estados Unidos y otra en Costa Rica, fue conducida una in­ vestigación exploratoria para descubrir tendencias y validar empíricamente una progresión de aprendizaje hipotética sobre la identidad química, que fue reportada anteriormente, para alumnos y profesores de pregrado y postgrado. Este trabajo es presentado a través de dos documentos. En el primero, a continuación, se presenta una breve historia del concepto macroscópico de sustancia, un resumen de la progresión de aprendizaje hipotética, y cómo se ubica dentro del marco teórico del pensamiento químico. Este manuscrito conduce al segundo trabajo en el que se presentan el marco analítico, y los resultados, implicaciones y conclusiones.

A perspective is presented on how the representation mapping framework by Hahn and Chater (1998) may be used to characterize reasoning during problem solving in chemistry. To provide examples for testing the framework, an exploratory study was conducted with students and professors from three different courses in the middle of the undergraduate chemistry curriculum. Each participant's reasoning while solving exam problems was characterized by comparing the stored knowledge representation used as a resource and the new instance representation associated with the problem being solved. Doing so required consideration of two ways in which abstraction occurs: abstractness of representations, and abstracting while using representations. The representation mapping framework facilitates comparison of the representations and how they were used. This resulted in characterization of reasoning as memory-bank or rule-based (rules processes), or similarity-based or prototype (similarity processes). Rules processes were observed in all three courses. Similarity-based reasoning seldom occurred in students, but was common to all of the professors’ problem solving, though with higher abstractness than in students. Examples from the data illustrate how representation mapping can be used to examine abstraction in problem solving across different kinds of problems and in participants with different levels of expertise. Such utility could permit identifying barriers to abstraction capacity and may facilitate faculty assessment development.

Professional development that bridges gaps between educational research and practice is needed. However, bridging gaps can be difficult because teachers and educational researchers often belong to different Communities of Practice, as their activities, goals, and means of achieving those goals often differ. Meaningful collaboration among teachers and educational researchers can create a merged Community of Practice in which both teachers and educational researchers mutually benefit. A collaboration of this type is described that centered on investigating students’ abilities to apply chemical thinking when engaged in authentic tasks. We describe the design-based principles behind the collaboration, the work of the collaborative team, and a self-evaluation of results interpreted through a Communities-of-Practice perspective, with primary focus on the teachers’ perceptions. Analysis revealed ways in which teachers’ assessments shifted toward more research-based practice and ways in which teachers navigated the research process. Implications for affordances and constraints of such collaborations among teachers and educational researchers are discussed.

The Center for Authentic Science Practice in Education (CASPiE) is a course-embedded undergraduate research curriculum that aims to introduce authentic research experiences for students in their early college years. A cohort of students who were randomly assigned to the CASPiE laboratory sections was tracked during and two and three years after course enrollment. Students from the traditional laboratory sections were also tracked for control purposes. This paper presents students' perceptions of the laboratory course at the time of enrollment, based on their answers to an online survey, and a comparison to students' later responses to semi-structured oral interviews about their course involvement. We found that students' views of the curricula persisted over the years. CASPiE students thought the curriculum allowed them to learn how to do research and in turn gained confidence to do such work. In contrast, students from the traditional sections thought they did not learn the practice of research in their course. These and related comparisons are presented with evidence from survey results and interview vignettes. The implications of the CASPiE curriculum implementation and its effects over the long term are discussed.