The purpose of this study was to elucidate and describe students’ thinking when making connections between substitution and elimination reactions and their corresponding reaction coordinate diagrams. Thirty-six students enrolled in organic chemistry II participated in individual, semi-structured interviews. Three major themes were identified that characterize students’ difficulties with integrating the information from the reactions and the reaction coordinate diagrams: incorrect ideas about the meanings of the reaction coordinate diagrams’ features, errors when examining reaction mechanisms, and an inability to assess the relative energies of reaction species. These findings suggest that students need support for coherence formation between reactions and reaction coordinate diagrams. Implications for teaching to address these student difficulties are suggested.

中文翻译：

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有机化学专业学生在反应和反应坐标图之间形成连贯性的挑战

这项研究的目的是阐明和描述学生在替代和消除反应及其对应的反应坐标图之间建立联系时的思维方式。参加有机化学II训练的36名学生参加了个别的，半结构化的访谈。确定了三个主要主题来表征学生在整合反应和反应坐标图信息时遇到的困难：关于反应坐标图特征含义的错误观念，检查反应机理时的错误以及无法评估相对能量反应物种。这些发现表明，学生需要支持反应和反应坐标图之间的连贯性形成。