Mental model in learning chemical bonding: a preliminary study

Abstract

Chemical bonding is one of the subjects that involves the use of models, varying from simple ones to sophisticated abstract models possessing considerable mathematical complexity. It is a topic that students commonly find to be problematic, developing a wide range of alternative conceptions. The fact is that students cannot see how the atoms or elementary particles are held together, and how they interact and bond together to form a compound. Student’ misconceptions regarding these chemical bonding concepts begin when they live and operate in a macroscopic world and do not easily follow the shifts between macroscopic and microscopic levels. As a result, they tend to build a non-scientific mental model, which means that the idea is not aligned with scientific concepts. Therefore a preliminary study was conducted in order to investigate students’ mental model in this topic.