The first law of thermodynamics is a guiding principle in the chemistry classroom that serves a crucial role by allowing students to address the crosscutting concept of energy and matter as defined by the Next Generation Science Standards. The widespread relevance of the first law across disciplinary contexts brings to question whether chemistry students are being prepared adequately through discipline-specific instruction to address the cross-cutting concept of energy and matter in an interdisciplinary environment such as the STEM workforce. A qualitative research study was undertaken to explore how undergraduate chemistry students conceptualize the first law when addressing problems framed with discipline-specific contexts. The research questions which guided this study were: (1) “How do chemistry students use the first law to address discipline-specific first law problems?” and (2) “How do students’ conceptualization of the first law compare across the fields of chemistry, engineering, and physics?” Participants were recruited from chemistry-, physics-, and engineering-major courses for each respective subject (n = 40) to compare students’ applied reasoning across disciplines when addressing each field-specific prompt. The Dynamic Transfer framework served as the primary theoretical and methodological basis for the study. Transcribed interview data was analyzed via a general inductive approach to identify any conceptual and epistemological ideas activated and the target contexts participants used to interpret the prompts. Analysis revealed three distinct types of reasoning that students used to interpret the first law: direction-oriented, magnitude-oriented, and process-oriented reasoning. Chemistry and physics students demonstrated a proficiency for drawing upon inferred chemical and physical processes to apply process-oriented reasoning, while engineering students relied heavily on calculation-intensive methods, magnitude-oriented reasoning. However, physics students exhibited notable flexibility between these three reasoning approaches when compared to chemistry students. These findings demonstrate the consequences of early discipline-specific instruction on the first law and provide implications for how chemistry students may be assisted in bridging across disciplinary boundaries pertaining to the cross-cutting concept of energy and matter.

Using the dynamic transfer framework to explore students’ interpretations of the first law across disciplinary contexts

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

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