What We Know About Learning in Chemistry

Chemistry education research is a field of research devoted to investigating teaching and learning in chemistry.  This presentation will describe what we know about student learning in undergraduate chemistry and where the frontiers of the field lie.  For example, it is well established in the research literature that students have many misconceptions about the particulate nature of matter.  Students struggle to understand the size and scale at the molecular level, how atoms absorb and emit energy, the energetics of bond making and bond breaking, covalent and ionic bonds, and polarity to name a few of the documented misconceptions.  What is relatively new is the development of learning progressions in undergraduate chemistry designed to address these misconceptions or pieces of fragmented knowledge to build a more coherent set of connected understandings.