Improving pedagogic strategies in analytical chemistry: Applying the action, process, object, schema theory (APOS theory) to chemical education efforts

CHED 1815

Margarita Rodriguez-Lopez, Department of Chemistry, Pontifical Catholic University, 2250 Ave. Las Americas, suite 569, Ponce, PR 00717 and Arnaldo Carrasquillo Jr., carrasa@uprm.edu, Department of Chemistry, University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez Campus, PO Box 9019, Mayaguez, PR 00681.
Analytical Chemistry (AC) will play a key role in the creation of future technologies. Therefore, learning the fundamental concepts of modern AC has become an important educational objective for future chemists and chemical engineers. In this presentation we describe how math education theories in general, and how the Action, Process, Object, Schema (APOS) theory specifically, may be added to the chemical education toolbox to provide useful feedback in the design of AC pedagogy. An example will be given to showcase how the incorporation of this math education theory can be beneficial during the design of chemical education interventions, especially for AC subjects where the physico-chemical phenomena of interest are obscured from learners due to increasing levels of mathematical abstraction. An analytical problem from general chemistry (i.e. dilution) is selected to demonstrate that the approach can be useful for AC teaching/learning at any level of mathematical abstraction.
 

General Papers
1:00 PM-4:50 PM, Thursday, March 29, 2007 McCormick Place North -- Room N230A, Level 2, Oral

Division of Chemical Education

The 233rd ACS National Meeting, Chicago, IL, March 25-29, 2007