It is widely believed that students taking chemistry courses, even those at the introductory level, learn chemistry content as well as engage in the process of doing chemistry. This engagement in process skills is intended to help students develop the procedural knowledge of a budding scientist or a scientifically literate member of society. Given these intentions, a specific process skill—scientific reasoning (SR)—was measured at the beginning and end of a nonscience majors’ chemistry course for six semesters to determine if the goal of increasing SR skills had been met. Previously published work has shown that in a traditional lecture class (a two-semester historical control), the growth, while statistically significant, was modest at best. Four semesters of students (the treatment group) engaged with materials designed to develop content knowledge through questions cueing SR skills. Results on the growth of SR skills in the treatment semesters will be presented along with the implications the results have on chemistry instruction.

Students’ growth in scientific reasoning and the implications for chemistry instruction

249th National Meeting (2015)

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