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

拟议中的项目旨在通过改善本科生在化学方面的学习来服务于国家利益。该项目计划考察学生对化学键的理解，这是化学中的一个核心概念。该项目被设计为一项定性的纵向研究，旨在洞察学生在参与要求他们推理、预测和解释与化学键相关的现象的任务时所使用的策略、方法和机制。该项目希望了解学生如何在从入门化学到更高级的有机化学的过程中发展和使用关于化学键的知识。本项目将涉及两个研究目标：1)调查普通化学和有机化学学生对键的理解的发展；2)探索学生对键和键模型的想法和认识论信念之间的相互作用。该项目由协调类理论指导，该理论将认知构建为由任务、活动或问题的显著特征在上下文中激活的细粒度知识元素网络。个人发展计划的要素，包括研究方法培训、文献回顾和提案撰写、指导和教学，旨在支持PI成为化学系终身教员的职业目标。该项目由STEM教育博士后研究奖学金(STEM Ed PRF)项目资助，旨在提高STEM、STEM教育、这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.