Instructional strategies that support meaningful student learning of complex chemical topics are an important aspect of improving chemistry education. Adequately assessing the success of these approaches can be supported with the use of aligned instruments with established psychometrics. Here, we report the implementation and assessment of one such curriculum, Chemical Thinking, on first-year general chemistry students' conceptions of relative acidity using the recently-developed concept inventory, ACIDI. Our results reveal that, overall, students performed significantly better on ACIDI following instruction, with scores consistent with those previously reported for students who had completed one semester of organic chemistry. Students performed equally well on a delayed post-test administered ten weeks after final instruction, which suggests that instruction promoted a stable conceptual reprioritisation. Item analysis of ACIDI revealed that students generally made conceptual gains on items where inductive effects were the primary determinants of conjugate base stability and relative acidity. However, students overwhelmingly struggled on items where resonance was the primary determinant. Analysis of student–student arguments in active learning settings provided evidence for how the quality of student arguments impacted their conceptions. Overall, these findings suggest that students were able to avoid several superficial misconceptions cited in the literature about relative acidity, and that this topic, traditionally taught exclusively in organic chemistry, may be introduced earlier in the sequence of curricular topics. Implications for future studies on the role of argumentational aspects of student–student conversations and facilitation strategies in promoting or hindering meaningful learning are discussed.

中文翻译：

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分析讨论型课程对普通化学大一学生相对酸度概念的影响

支持有意义的学生学习复杂化学主题的教学策略是改进化学教育的重要方面。可以使用已建立的心理计量学的对齐工具来充分评估这些方法的成功。在这里，我们使用最新开发的概念清单ACIDI，报告了其中一门课程《化学思维》的实施和评估情况，该课程针对一年级普通化学专业学生的相对酸度概念。我们的结果表明，总体而言，学生在ACIDI上的表现明显更好按照说明进行，分数与之前为完成一学期有机化学课程的学生所报告的分数一致。在最后的教学后十周，学生在延迟的后期测试中表现同样出色，这表明教学促进了稳定的概念优先化。ACIDI的项目分析他发现，学生通常会在归纳效应是共轭碱稳定性和相对酸度的主要决定因素的项目上获得概念上的收获。但是，学生在以共振为主要决定因素的项目上进行了压倒性的努力。在积极学习环境中对学生-学生论证的分析为学生论证质量如何影响其观念提供了证据。总体而言，这些发现表明，学生能够避免文献中提到的有关相对酸度的一些表面上的误解，而且这个传统上只在有机化学中讲授的主题可能会在课程主题序列中更早地引入。