Chemists refer to chemical phenomena on different representational levels—macroscopic, symbolic, and submicroscopic—which are directly related and connected to each other. Especially in the laboratory, students have to reason about various mechanistic features at the submicroscopic level and connect them in a meaningful way to make sense of the observable. There is plenty of evidence in chemistry education that students have difficulty connecting the different representational levels when thinking about chemical phenomena. However, current literature provides limited information about the mechanistic features that students activate when reasoning about phenomena and how they transition between the representational levels when in an organic chemistry laboratory. In this study, we performed in-depth analysis of how organic chemistry student teachers (N = 9) explained typical work-up procedures and characterized their activated mechanistic features and transitions between the different representational levels. Our analysis revealed that the students do not activate all features of a mechanism in the same way and construct various explanatory approaches. The findings emphasize the need to explicitly communicate how to connect the macroscopic and submicroscopic levels in a meaningful way in the laboratory. The implications of these findings for research, teaching, and learning to foster meaningful activation of mechanistic features are discussed.

中文翻译：

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代表性水平之间的转换：在论证实验室后处理程序时表征有机化学学生的力学特征

化学家指的是具有不同代表​​关系的化学现象，即宏观，象征和亚微观，它们是直接相关的，并且彼此关联。尤其是在实验室中，学生必须在亚微观层面上推理各种机械特征，并以有意义的方式将它们连接起来，以使可观察的感觉变得有意义。化学教育中有大量证据表明，在思考化学现象时，学生很难连接不同的表征水平。但是，当前的文献提供了关于学生在推理现象时激活的机制功能以及在有机化学实验室中它们如何在表示层之间转换的有限信息。在这项研究中，N = 9）解释了典型的后处理程序，并描述了其激活的机械特征以及不同表示水平之间的转换。我们的分析表明，学生并非以相同的方式激活机制的所有功能，而是构建各种解释方法。研究结果强调需要明确交流如何在实验室中以有意义的方式连接宏观和亚微观层面。讨论了这些发现对研究，教学和学习的意义，以促进机械特征的有意义的激活。