Marcy Towns is a Professor of Chemistry and Director of General Chemistry at Purdue University. Her talk was titled "Blending Chemical and Mathematical Knowledge as Solve Problems in Chemical Kinetics."

Abstract

Answering recent calls for discipline-based education research and interdisciplinary work, this study seeks to investigate how students integrate chemistry and mathematics during problem solving in chemical kinetics, a context that has little attention in the literature. This work investigates the following research question: In what ways do chemistry and mathematics knowledge interact as students engage in chemical kinetics problem solving? Personal constructs, a blend of personal and social constructivism, servedas the theoretical framework for this study, which involved semi-structured interviewsusing a think-aloud protocol with 36 general chemistry students, 5 upper-level physical chemistry students, and 3 chemical engineering students. Audio and written data were collected using a Livescribe pen, which were then combined to create interpreted narratives for each student. Blendedprocessing, a theory from cognitive science that characterizes human knowledge integration, was used as a methodological framework to guide the analysis. Open coding revealed themes relating to common topics that were discussed when blending occurred; variation in the depth of blending was also characterized. Results provide implications for supporting student problem solving and the modeling of chemical processes.