Analysis of student’s conception on neutralisation: a qualitative study

Abstract

Knowledge of chemistry involves abstract concepts and it should be explained in three representative levels, namely, macroscopic representative level, sub-microscopic representative level and symbolic representative level. The success of students in mastering the concepts of Chemistry is closely related to their ability to create relationships among the three levels of representation. Relying on this basis, the purpose of this study is to analyse the student’s conception of neutralisation according to these three representation level. The sample of the study constituted of 30 science stream students. The study was conducted by using Chemistry Achievement Test (CAT) as an instrument. The CAT is based on the multiple representations, developed according to the Malaysian context by the researcher. The data collected from the test were interpreted and analysed qualitatively. Based on the analysis carried out, a number of major difficulties and mistakes often experienced by the students at all the representation levels were identified. Among the mistakes were, the students could not relate between the number of particles which had reacted and that which had not during the neutralisation process. They also failed to determine the colour change of phenolphthalein on reaching the end point of the titration process. Other than that, the results also indicated that, the sub-microscopic level was the most problematic for them.