Learning to interpret organic structures not as an arrangement of lines and letters but, rather, as a representation of chemical entities is a challenge in organic chemistry. To successfully deal with the variety of molecules or mechanistic representations, a learner needs to understand how a representation depicts domain-specific information. Various studies that focused on representational competence have already investigated how learners relate a representation to its corresponding concept. However, aside from a basic connectional representational understanding, the ability to infer a comparable reactivity from multiple different functional groups in large molecules is important for undergraduate students in organic chemistry. In this quantitative study, we aimed at exploring how to assess undergraduate students’ ability to distinguish between conceptually relevant similarities and distracting surface similarities among representations. The instrument consisted of multiple-choice items in four concept categories that are generally used to estimate the reactivity in substitution reactions. This exploratory study shows that the item design for assessing students’ conceptual understanding influences students’ answering patterns. Insights and pitfalls gained from this investigation and future directions for research and teaching are provided.

中文翻译：

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显式相似性与隐式相似性–探索有机化学中的关系概念理解

学会将有机结构解释为不是将其解释为线条和字母的排列，而是将其解释为化学实体的表示是有机化学中的一个挑战。为了成功处理各种分子或机械表示，学习者需要了解表示如何描绘特定领域的信息。专注于表征能力的各种研究已经研究了学习者如何将表征与其相应的概念联系起来。但是，除了对基本的连接表示法理解外，从大分子中的多个不同官能团推断出可比反应性的能力对于有机化学的本科生来说很重要。在这项定量研究中 我们旨在探索如何评估大学生区分概念上相关的相似点和分散表征之间的表面相似点的能力。该仪器由四个概念类别中的多项选择项组成，通常用于估计替代反应中的反应性。这项探索性研究表明，用于评估学生的概念理解的项目设计会影响学生的回答方式。提供了从这次调查中获得的见识和陷阱，以及研究和教学的未来方向。这项探索性研究表明，用于评估学生的概念理解的项目设计会影响学生的回答方式。提供了从这次调查中获得的见识和陷阱，以及研究和教学的未来方向。这项探索性研究表明，用于评估学生的概念理解的项目设计会影响学生的回答方式。提供了从这次调查中获得的见识和陷阱，以及研究和教学的未来方向。