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Conceptual Profile of Substance

Representing Heterogeneity of Thinking in Chemistry Classrooms

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Abstract

Teachers face challenges when building the concept of substance with students because tensions of meanings emerge from students’ daily life and canonical ideas developed in classrooms. A powerful tool to address learning, pedagogical, and research challenges is the conceptual profile theory. According to this theory, people employ various ways of conceptualizing the world to signify experiences. Conceptual profiles are models of the heterogeneity of modes of thinking and speaking about a given scientific concept which are used in a variety of contexts. To better understand the heterogeneity of thinking/speaking about substance, the present study aimed to answer: (1) What are the zones that constitute the conceptual profile of substance?; and (2) What ways of thinking and speaking about substance do teachers and students exhibit when engaged in a classroom formative assessment activity? The study adopted an inductive–deductive qualitative analysis approach to analyze secondary data from the history of chemistry, philosophy of chemistry, and student thinking, as well as primary data from student and teacher questionnaires and interviews in eight classrooms, and a formative assessment activity in four of these classrooms. Six conceptual profile zones were found through identifying sets of ontological, epistemological, and axiological commitments regarding each zone. Subsequently, the conceptual profile of substance was tested by employing it to re-analyze the formative assessment activity to represent high school students’ and teachers’ thinking about substance. The developed conceptual profile was found to be effective, thus prospectively useful to teachers, in representing the heterogeneity of thinking about substance in chemistry classrooms.

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Notes

  1. Chemical medicine: ἰατρός (iatro) was the Greek word for physician or medicine, and iatrochemistry was a school of thought in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with the goal of understanding medicine in terms of chemistry.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the teachers who welcomed us into their classrooms to observe, collect student work, and interview them and their students. The first and second authors (R.O.P. and H.S.) acknowledge the funding source that supported this work: United States National Science Foundation award DRL-1621228. Also, the third author (E. F. M.) acknowledges the funding source that supported this work: Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimiento Científico e Tecnológico awards 305205/2015-3 and 437439/2018-6.

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  1. Department of Chemistry, University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, MA, USA

    Raúl Orduña Picón & Hannah Sevian

  2. Faculdade de Educação, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil

    Eduardo F. Mortimer

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  1. Raúl Orduña Picón
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Orduña Picón, R., Sevian, H. & Mortimer, E.F. Conceptual Profile of Substance. Sci & Educ 29, 1317–1360 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-020-00152-4

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