Bonding is formally taught in both secondary education (grades 9-12) and the undergraduate general chemistry curriculum. A wide variety of representations can be used to depict the abstract nature of covalent and ionic bonding, including Lewis structures, formulas, spacefilling models, and ball and stick models. As students learn to interpret these representations, they may develop or solidify misconceptions about bonding. General chemistry and high school chemistry students were interviewed in order to determine what students understand about covalent and ionic bonding. Students were asked to build and critique their own representations of covalent and ionic bonding as well as asked to discuss expert generated representations of CCl4, PCl5, and NaCl. Through constant comparative analysis, it was determined that students erroneously determined bond type using one or more of the following categories: periodic trends, electrostatic interactions, the octet rule, and/or surface features. The 23-item Bonding Representations Inventory (BRI) was developed to measure these misconceptions, with each item closely tied to at least one of the four categories. The BRI was administered to 1,072 high school chemistry, advanced placement chemistry, and general chemistry students across the United States. A cross comparison of misconceptions found among the three groups of students will be presented along with evidence of the validity and reliability of data generated by the BRI. Implications and possible future uses of the BRI for both teachers and the CER community will also be presented.

Measuring students' understandings of covalent and ionic bonding representations with the Bonding Representations Inventory (BRI)

246th National Meeting (2013)

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