Collaborative Research: An Integrated Cognitive and Conceptual Curriculum for a General Chemistry Inquiry Laboratory

来自北肯塔基大学和加州州立大学富勒顿分校的研究人员正在设计一系列综合实验室活动，帮助学生发展认知技能，以支持对化学概念的理解。更具体地说，实验室活动针对的是实验室探究性学习特有的认知技能，以及学生在宏观、微观和符号表征之间转换概念的能力。实验室教学材料集中于第一学期普通化学的四个概念领域：物理和化学变化、化学计量学、溶液和气体。实验室活动正在使用学习连续体框架进行开发，该框架描述了认知和概念学习目标的发展进程，这些目标是在结构化、指导性和开放式三种探究方法之间建立起来的。本研究旨在探讨认知技能与第一学期化学实验室概念发展之间的关系。研究的一个重点将是如何培养学生的能力来解释，发展和完善心理模型之间的桥梁微观和宏观层面的观点。研究结果将为认知技能发展所需的脚手架的性质和程度以及概念学习与心理模型发展之间的联系提供实践指导。两所高等教育机构正在研究实验室活动的实施情况，以便将不同背景的学生包括在内，其理由是这样可以提高研究结果的普遍性和可转移性。在美国的两年制和四年制大学中，正在寻找并进行实验室活动的复制。完全复制的实验室活动将在一个免费网站上共享，同时还有一个报告当前研究成果的博客，研究问题列表和反馈点。

Investigators from Northern Kentucky University and California State University Fullerton are designing a series of integrated laboratory activities that scaffold students' development of cognitive skills to support conceptual understanding in chemistry. More specifically, the laboratory activities target cognitive skills specific to inquiry-based learning in the laboratory, and target the abilities of students to transform concepts between macroscopic, particulate and symbolic representations. The laboratory instructional materials focus on four concept domains in first-term general chemistry: physical and chemical change, stoichiometry, solutions, and gases. Laboratory activities are being developed using a Learning Continuum Framework which describes a developmental progression of cognitive and conceptual learning objectives scaffolded across the three inquiry approaches of structured, guided and open. The research studies relationships between cognitive skills and conceptual development in the first-term chemistry laboratory. A focus of the research will be on how students develop the capacity to interpret, develop and refine mental models that bridge between particulate and macroscopic level perspectives. The results of the research will provide practical guidance on the nature and degree of scaffolding necessary for development of cognitive skills and the nexus between conceptual learning and mental model development. Implementation of the laboratory activities is being studied at both higher education institutions in order to include students with diverse backgrounds, on the rationale that this increases generalizability and transferability of the study's findings. Replications of the laboratory activities are being sought and carried out at two- and four-year colleges across the U.S. Fully replicated laboratory activities are being shared on a free website, along with a blog reporting current research efforts, list of research questions and feedback points.