ChemSense: Investigating Learning and the Impact of Sustained Integration of Representational Tools and Chemical Investigations in the Classroom

将开展一项多学科的研究和开发计划，审查表征工具和化学调查的持续整合对高中和大学化学学习和教学的影响。一个由化学家、认知科学家、计算机科学家和科学教育工作者组成的团队将专注于三个关键且相互关联的问题：化学理解、科学调查以及话语和表达。该项目将在合作实验室调查的背景下，产生关于学生对化学现象的理解与他们在宏观(物理、聚合)和微观(原子和分子)层面上各种表示的产生和使用之间的关系的新知识。此外，它还将发展关于教师活动、脚手架和支持与学生在协作实验室调查中使用陈述之间的关系的新知识。计划扩大开发一种学习环境，即既支持研究活动又从研究活动中受益的ChemSense知识建设环境。这种环境允许学生和教师/教授合作对化学现象进行持续的调查，收集数据，建立这些现象的表征，并参与脚手架话语，以根据潜在的化学实体和机制解释这些现象。该项目团队将与化学教授和高中化学教师合作，在一系列大学和高中化学课程中实施整个学期的这种环境。这些活动和评估将围绕与物质的颗粒性和化学反应相关的关键维度进行设计：分子几何、连接性、聚集性、状态和浓度的变化。在高中课堂上，这些维度将在相当标准的高中一年级化学课程中使用：电负性和键形成、溶解度、气体定律和化学反应。本科生的学习将集中于将化学感知融入两种类型的课堂情景：一年级的讲课课程旨在通过有机化学传达一般化学原理，一年级的综合“工作室”课程结合了授课和湿实验经验。在适当的实验室活动和教师指导下，推广使用学生生成的化学过程的静态和动态表示，以及仪器生成的他们调查的表示，应该会导致更深入的讨论和理解，将物理现象与潜在的化学实体和机制联系起来。

A multidisciplinary program of research and development that examines the impact of the sustained integration of representational tools and chemical investigations on chemistry learning and teaching in high schools and colleges will be undertaken. A team of chemists, cognitive scientists, computer scientists, and science educators will focus on three critical and interrelated issues: chemical understanding, scientific investigations, and discourse and representation. The project will generate new knowledge about the relationship between students' understanding of chemical phenomena and their generation and use of various representations at the macroscopic (physical, aggregate) and microscopic (atomic and molecular) levels and in the context of collaborative laboratory investigations. Additionally it will evolve new knowledge about the relationship between teacher activities, scaffolding, and support and students' use of representations in collaborative laboratory investigations. It is planned to extend the development of a learning environment, the ChemSense Knowledge Building Environment that both supports and benefits from research activities. This environment allows students and teachers/professors to collaborate in the sustained investigation of chemical phenomena, collect data, build representations of these phenomena, and participate in scaffolded discourse to explain these phenomena in terms of underlying chemical entities and mechanisms. The project team will work with chemistry professors and high school chemistry teachers to implement this environment for an entire semester in a range of college and high school chemistry courses. These activities and assessments will be designed around key dimensions associated with the particulate nature of matter and chemical reactions: change in molecular geometry, connectivity, aggregation, state, and concentration. In high school classrooms, these dimensions will be employed within fairly standard first-year high school chemistry topics: electronegativity and bond formation, solubility, gas laws, and chemical reactions. Undergraduate studies will focus on integration of ChemSense into two types of classroom situations: a first-year lecture course designed to convey general chemical principles through organic chemistry, and a first-year, integrated "studio" course that combines lecture and wet-lab experiences. With appropriate laboratory activities and teacher guidance, the extended use of student generated, static and dynamic representations of chemical processes, along with instrument generated representations of their investigations, should result in deeper discourse and understanding that connect physical phenomena with underlying chemical entities and mechanisms.