Uncovering Students’ Genuine Misconceptions: Evidence to Inform the Teaching of Chemical Kinetics

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate first-year university students’ misconceptions in chemical kinetics by analysing data obtained from the four-tier diagnostic instrument of chemical kinetics (FTDICK). 335 first-year chemistry students from two Indonesian and one UK universities participated in this study. The procedure described here is the first of its type to ensure those misconceptions are genuine. Numerous genuine misconceptions within chemical kinetics were revealed among first-year chemistry undergraduates. Although many of the misconceptions found here concur with those results previously published using other instruments, some novel findings were uncovered. These misconceptions can be attributed to a variety of factors including mathematical weakness, carelessness and difficulty in interpreting and extracting information from diagrams, graphs and other non-textual information. On the basis of the results from this study we make some recommendations for improving the effectiveness of chemical kinetics’ teaching at this level.