STUDENTS’ CORPUSCULAR CONCEPTIONS IN THE CONTEXT OF CHEMICAL EQUILIBRIUM AND CHEMICAL KINETICS

Abstract

This article consists of a review of a research program in chemical education in The Netherlands which aimed to develop students’ ideas of macroscopic chemical phenomena together with their views of the particulate nature of matter. Starting from the initial and often naive corpuscular conceptions of the students, an attempt was made to develop these conceptions by letting students perform chemical experiments, and inviting them to explain their observations in corpuscular terms. In this program, students in the first year of chemical education (aged 14-15 years) were introduced to the concepts of ‘chemical substance’ and ‘chemical reaction’. In the second year of chemical education, the program focused on the introduction of the concepts of ‘chemical equilibrium’ and ‘chemical kinetics’. The results of the empirical investigation of students’ conceptions and reasoning revealed that students of this age have limited abilities to reason in corpuscular terms. However, it was concluded that students can gradually learn to become more proficient in using corpuscular models as explanatory tools. This was indicated by a range of evidence, including that of students who used a simple model of colliding and moving particles to explain chemical phenomena in the areas of chemical equilibrium and chemical kinetics. [Chem. Educ. Res. Pract. Eur.: 2002, 3, 201-213]