Creating Better Classroom Practices for Reducing ...

Creating Better Classroom Practices for Reducing Cognitive Load in School Chemistry Learning: Initial Thoughts Dr K Abdul Gafoor Associate Professor

Shilna V Junior Research Fellow Department of Education University of Calicut

(Presented in the National Level Seminar on Emerging Perspectives in Science Learning, 1st and 2nd March 2012)

Introduction Teaching is a never-ending quest for new knowledge and ideas to meet the needs of a changing world with respect to context, content and students. The ultimate teaching goal is for all students to acquire the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to function effectively in modern world (Freiburg & Driscoll, 2000). All human beings require scientific literacy among other things. It will help future generation to be interested in, and understand the world around them, to engage in the discourses of and about science, to be skeptical and questioning of claims made by others about scientific matters, to be able to make informed decisions about the environment and their own health and well-being, and the like. Science teaching is a continuing effort to present ideas in ways that are authentic representations of the scientific concepts and yet simple enough to be meaningfully understood by the learners. Enhancing students' science learning is a major goal of science teaching and science education research. Teachers should engage students in classroom activities that will help them learn more. Teaching community is continuously striving to develop more effective, pedagogically and scientifically sound, strategies to teach high school students the concept of science. As in any other type of learning, multitude of factors relate and affect the process of learning, and hence, achievement in science. These factors are sourcing from family environment, school environment, and learner and content characteristics. Chemistry is one of the most important basic subjects in science, one of the oldest and most faithful friends of man, one that has worked perpetually for man's progress. Making fire, using fuel, extracting metal, making glass and pottery are milestones of ancient human civilization marching on the broad shoulders of chemistry. And the march continues unabated- fertilizers, medicines, fibres, plastics, chip. The list is endless. Above all life itself is a concert of chemistry. Reviewing many a studies Holbrook (2005) made observation that researchers on chemistry teaching describe it as unpopular and irrelevant in the eyes of students,

as not promoting higher order cognitive skills , as leading to gaps between students wishes and teachers teaching and as unchanging as teachers are afraid of change and need guidance. The difficulties of learning chemistry relates to the nature of chemistry itself and the methods by which chemistry is customarily taught without taking into account the psychology of the learner (Hussein & Reid, 2009). This paper is a discussion of certain factors that contribute to teachers and students’ perception of chemistry as a difficult subject to learn. Understanding these factors will help find ways to ameliorate the situation by finding, suggesting and testing innovations in teaching the subject. The overview focuses on two questions. What are the main areas of learning difficulty in chemistry? Moreover, what are the related aspects of reducing obstacles to learning chemistry? Areas of Learning Difficulty in Chemistry 1. Abstract, unobservable, particulate basis of chemistry Chemistry curricula commonly incorporate many abstract concepts, which are central to further learning in both chemistry and other sciences (Taber, 2002).Many students claim that science is hard to learn and view chemistry as one of the most difficult subjects to study (Johnstone 1991). Majority of students are facing a difficulty in understanding chemistry concepts. The difficulties are due to the abstract, unobservable, particulate basis of chemistry and the need for rapid transfer among the macroscopic, submicroscopic and symbolic levels of thought (Johnstone 1999). At the macroscopic or phenomenal level properties can be seen and measured. At the submicroscopic level, molecular structures of the particles cannot be seen, whereas the symbolic level is the way a substance is represented by its chemical formula. While chemists and chemical educators operate across the various levels quickly and easily, students have difficulties in creating links across these levels. The difficulties may lie in the capabilities of the pupil for learning as well as in the intrinsic nature of the subject. The goal of a good teacher is to make Chemistry vivid and easy to understand in order to stimulate students' intellectual curiosity, which in turn leads to learning enhancement. 2. Memorizing than understanding chemistry concepts Chemistry learning requires much intellectual thought and discernment because the content is replete with many abstract concepts. Many students in secondary school and in the universities have many difficulties in understanding chemistry (Ross & Munby, 1991; Griffiths & Preston, 1992; Nakhleh, 1992; Schmidt, 1995; Sanger & Greenbowe, 1997; Pınarbaşı & Canpolat, 2003; Sepet, Yılmaz & Morgil, 2004; Agung & Schwartz, 2007; Othman, Treagust & Chandrasegaran, 2008).

For this reason, students develop scientifically unacceptable conceptions about many subjects or concepts in chemistry. Their knowledge of chemistry is therefore incomplete and incoherent (Kozma & Russell, 1997). Many students, in fact, merely memorize chemistry concepts without actually learning them (Haidar, 1997; Niaz & Rodriguez, 2000). This situation is an indication of why some students never come to like chemistry. Many students leave high school chemistry courses with profound misunderstandings about the nature of matter, chemical processes, and chemical systems (Krajcik, 1991). 3. Lack of motivation towards the subject It has been observed that so many students fear chemistry and such fear is characterized by mass disenchantment among the students towards the subject. The product is declining popularity of the subject over the years. According to Keeves and Morgenstern, (1992), students’ anxiety towards the learning of chemistry makes them to lose interest in the sciences. Major challenge in Chemistry Education is the gap between the high demands that learning requires and the low efforts that students make partially due to the lack of cognitive load. Chemistry contains abundant amount of abstract concepts, which necessitates significant time and effort commitments from the students. The contrast between low inputs and high demands results in unsatisfactory performance on the students' side and frustration on the instructors' side. 4. Cognitive load, working memory capacity and field-dependence Working memory capacity and field-dependence are two of the cognitive variables lead to cognitive load. Cognitive load theory suggests that the free exploration of a highly complex environment may generate a heavy working memory load that is detrimental to learning. This suggestion is particularly important in the case of novice learners, who lack proper schemas to integrate the new information with their prior knowledge (Mayer, 2001; Paas, Renkel, & Sweller, 1999, 2003, 2004; Winn, 2003). Most chemistry syllabi at school level move very rapidly into atoms, molecules and equations. The students cannot cope, as their working memories are easily overloaded. Each student has a memory capacity for a particular age level. This working memory capacity has an important role in their learning. The working memory capacity of students can be improved for a better learning outcome. Faced with new and often conceptually complex material, the chemistry student needs to develop skills to organize the ideas so that the working space is not overloaded.

Another important cognitive characteristic is the field-dependence of the individual. Field-dependent persons have difficulty in separating an item from its context and are inclined to respond to the dominant properties of a field presented to them. In their review, Tinajero and Paramo (1998) concluded that no matter what the nature of assessment is, field-independent students perform better than field-dependent students. 5. Content of school chemistry There are many variables, which affects the chemistry learning among school students. The content itself is a very important variable. Studies of Tsaparlis (2010) revealed that majority of secondary students have difficulties in learning chemical concepts such as: the periodic table, chemical bonds, writing chemical equations, writing chemical formula, organic chemistry, the mole and chemical calculations, liquids and solutions. Periodic table, chemical bonding and organic chemistry In Chemistry, the Periodic Table is not only one of the basic organizing principles to which students are introduced (Schmidt et al., 2003), but also a central model used as a tool of induction (Ben-Zvi and Genut, 1998). Further, the Periodic Table plays a significant role in both understanding of the chemical elements (Atkins, 1995; Brieto et al., 2005) and predicting their features: the elements' structure and properties, and their relationships (e.g. Ben-Zvi and Genut, 1998; Nelson, 2000; Schmidt et al., 2003; Brieto et al., 2005). The Periodic Table of the elements is a cornerstone for learning chemistry and a tool that serves to organize the whole of chemistry (Scerri, 2007), much research in chemistry education has concentrated on different perspectives. The abstract concept of chemical bonding is considered by teachers, students, and chemical educators to be a very difficult and complicated concept (Taber, 2002). During the last two decades researchers have found that students commonly lack a deep conceptual understanding of the key ideas regarding the bonding concept and often fail to integrate their mental models into a coherent conceptual framework (Bodner & Domin, 1998; Griffiths & Preston, 1992; Herron, 1996; Peterson & Treagust, 1989; Taber, 2001b). Students’ misconception regarding this concept is because they live and operate within macroscopic world of matter and do not easily follow shifts between macroscopic and sub- microscopic levels (Gabel, 1996;

Harrison & Treagust, 2000). Consequently, they tend to build themselves alternative conceptions and nonscientific mental models (Taber, 2002). Organic chemistry is the gateway course for students pursuing health professions as well as upper-level biology, biochemistry, and chemistry programs. As a result, the course has a wide audience of students, all of whom desire to do well in the course. Students find organic chemistry challenging because of the breadth and depth of content and the rapid pace of the course, often referring to it as the infamous, dreaded “orgo”, a marathon of memorization. Organic Chemistry is a field that relies up on the use of two-dimensional structures and figures to represent threedimensional molecules. Students with field-independence only can comprehend these things in a meaningful way. 6. Present mode of instruction The constructivist approach to high school chemistry instruction emphasizes the student’s cognitive creation of chemical concepts via daily active practical involvement with a limited number of chemical substances. Rote procedures, formulas and rules are deferred until the student is given the opportunity to construct his own rules based on his assimilation of the observed chemical phenomena. Activities given for many concepts in chemistry are far beyond the reach of child's imagination as they are finding it difficult to correlate with daily life. In constructivism teachers spend less time on drilling the basic concepts, (Andrew, 2007). Drilling is very much important in the learning of concepts like Periodic Table and Organic Chemistry. The activities provided to the learners are monotonous in nature and are unable to meet the needs of the learners. Variety in experiences always increases their interest in learning and no doubt, will create a positive attitude towards the subject itself. Reducing Obstacles to Learning Chemistry Learning is actually an interaction between the existing knowledge and new knowledge. The use of appropriate teaching strategies can relate the novel abstract chemistry concepts with the concrete existing chemistry knowledge. Thus the strategies can allocate proper working memory space and can allow students to be field-independent. This will reduce the cognitive load in chemistry learning among students. For the past decade, chemistry scholars and researchers have been trying to explain how students should be helped to understand chemistry better (Ben-Zvi et al.

1986; Gabel 1998; Kozma and Russell 1997; Wu et al. 2001). Researchers have been arguing the necessity of learning at macroscopic, microscopic and symbolic levels (Gabel 1998; Johnstone 1993). 1. Analogies Literature presents many alternatives to remedy the difficulties in chemistry. Analogies have been an important part of chemistry education for many years. Especially, analogies have been used to teach abstract concepts like chemical equilibrium, nature of matter and chemical bonding. Accordingly, analogies plays central role in supporting the understanding of complex concepts and topics. An analogy could be defined as an explicit comparison between two fields: one unknown and the other familiar to the individual. While unknown field is identified as target or object, familiar field is named as analog, base or source. The main purpose is to compare target with analog and become easier understanding of target as analog is familiar for the individual. Analogy is a powerful tool used in constructivist views of learning because it can construct a relation between prior knowledge and new knowledge. Studies into analogy texts done by Glynn and Takahashi (1998) and by Paris and Glynn (2004) showed that the analogy-enhanced text had a positive effect on students' science knowledge. 2. Concept mapping Chemistry is a pure and mature discipline. It has a systematic knowledge base. The use of concept mapping can help students begin to understand interrelationships among concepts. This method can arrange concepts through interacting systems, in this system, all relationships between concepts are made clear. This method is suitable for developing students’ cognitive structures. It can also contribute significantly towards meaningful learning in the mind of the student. Words are used to label the links in order to depict the relationships more explicitly (Anderson-Inman and Zeitz 1994). Concept maps can serve as a key plan for a teacher in working out the best way to teach a topic. 3. Worked examples Worked examples are a kind of examples involving systematic solutions to problems typically presented in textual, graphical, video, or face-to-face format. John Sweller (1999) in his cognitive load theory has investigated the benefits of interleaving worked examples with problem solving practice. Worked examples have a rich and successful history in teaching and learning chemistry. (Brooks, Crippen, 2005). 4. Games

Students, in the more informal atmosphere produced by playing games, are less self conscious and, therefore more apt to experiment and participate freely in class. In addition, games automatically stimulate student interest; a properly introduced game can be a very good motivating technique. Games can also be used to focus the students' attention on a specific structure; they may function as reinforcement, review or enrichment, and they contribute to an atmosphere of healthy competition as well as ensure a great amount of student participation.

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