Postdoctoral Fellowship: STEMEdIPRF: The Longitudinal Development of Students' Cognitive and EpiSTEMological Knowledge about Bonding Models

提出的项目旨在通过提高本科学生的化学学习来服务于国家利益。该项目计划考察学生对化学核心概念化学键的理解。该项目是一项定性的纵向研究，旨在深入了解学生在从事要求他们推理、预测和解释与化学键有关的现象时所使用的策略、方法和机制。该项目希望了解学生在从入门化学到更高级的有机化学的过程中如何发展和使用化学键的知识。本项目主要有两个研究目标：1)调查普通化学和有机化学学生对成键理解的发展；2)探索学生对成键和成键模型的观念和认识论信念之间的相互作用。该项目以协调类理论为指导，该理论将认知框架为细粒度知识元素的网络，这些知识元素在任务、活动或问题的显著特征的背景下被激活。个人发展计划的要素，包括研究方法、文献综述和提案写作、指导和教学方面的培训，旨在支持PI成为化学系终身教职人员的职业目标。该项目由STEM教育博士后研究奖学金（STEM Ed PRF）计划资助，旨在提高STEM， STEM教育，教育和相关学科的近期博士的研究知识，技能和实践，以促进他们从事基础和应用研究的准备，从而推进该领域的知识。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The proposed project aims to serve the national interest by improving undergraduate student learning in chemistry. The project plans to look at students’ understanding of chemical bonding, a core concept in chemistry. The project is designed as a qualitative longitudinal study to provide insight into the strategies, approaches, and mechanisms students use when engaging in tasks that require them to reason, predict, and explain phenomena related to chemical bonding. The project hopes to understand how students develop and use knowledge about chemical bonding as they progress from introductory chemistry through more advanced organic chemistry.Two research aims will be addressed in this project: 1) to investigate the development of general and organic chemistry students’ understanding of bonding, and 2) to explore the interplay between students’ ideas and epistemological beliefs about bonding and bonding models. The project is guided by Coordination Class Theory, which frames cognition as a network of fine-grained knowledge elements that are activated in context by the salient features of a task, activity, or problem. Elements of the individual development plan, including training in research methodology, literature review and proposal writing, mentoring, and teaching are intended to support the PI’s career goal of becoming a tenure-track faculty member in a chemistry department.This project is funded by the STEM Education Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (STEM Ed PRF) program that aims to enhance the research knowledge, skills, and practices of recent doctorates in STEM, STEM education, education, and related disciplines to advance their preparation to engage in fundamental and applied research that advances knowledge within the field.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.