Science Literacy and Undergraduate Success: Incorporating Scale as a Theme in Introductory Chemistry

该项目的重点是规模识字，这是美国科学促进会此前确定的科学识字四个共同主题之一。主要目标是提高普通化学学生的规模素养，并建立他们在化学方面的成功与他们的规模素养水平之间的关系。为了实现这一目标，该项目正在将规模扫盲与对具体化学内容的概念理解联系起来，在各种情况下(讲座、实验室、补充指导)创建和部署以规模为主题的综合教学，并确定在基础课程中纳入规模的概念如何在其他课程中取得成功。这个项目的智力价值在于确定了在明确纳入普通化学课程的情况下，短期和长期内规模识字的增加与概念理解之间的相关性。根据初步调查结果，规模素养是化学入门课程成功的一个更好的预测因素，该项目还将确定整合规模主题教学如何在总体上和特定内容领域内提高成绩。这一项目的更广泛影响包括学生科学素养的普遍提高，即使在大量招生的化学入门课程中也是如此。更直接的是，该项目正在分发新颖的、以规模为主题的普通化学教学材料，以及教师专业发展活动，以使不同机构的学生受益。此外，由于规模不是化学独有的，其他大学科学课程的学生也受益于这项研究的结果在各学科中被采用和实施。

This project is focusing on scale literacy, one of four common themes previously identified by the American Association for the Advancement of Science for scientific literacy. The primary objective is increasing the scale literacy of general chemistry students and is establishing the correlation of their success in chemistry with their level of scale literacy. To achieve the objective the project is correlating scale literacy with conceptual understanding of specific chemistry content, is creating and deploying integrated scale-themed instruction in a variety of contexts (lecture, laboratory, supplemental instruction), and is determining how incorporation of concepts of scale in foundation courses leads to success in other courses. The intellectual merit of this project is the determination of the correlation between increases in scale literacy with conceptual understanding, both in the short and long terms, when explicitly included in the general chemistry curriculum. Based on preliminary findings that scale literacy is a better predictor for success in an introductory chemistry course, this project is also establishing how integrating scale-themed instruction leads to improved performance both overall, and within specific content areas. The broader impacts of this project include a general increase in students' scientific literacy even within large enrollment introductory chemistry courses. More directly, the project is distributing novel, scale-themed instructional materials for General Chemistry as well as faculty professional development activities to allow students across institutions to benefit. Further, since scale is not unique to chemistry, students in other college science courses are benefiting as the outcomes of this research are adopted and implemented across disciplines.