Students’ Attention on Curved Arrows While Evaluating the Plausibility of an Organic Mechanistic Step

Abstract

Reaction mechanisms and electron pushing formalism are central to organic chemistry, but students often struggle understanding the meanings underlying these tools. Since mechanisms are hypotheses for how reactions occur, evaluating the plausibility of mechanisms is important in understanding how reactions happen and predicting outcomes of these reactions. This mixed method study with 20 organic chemistry students used eye tracking, followed by think-aloud interviews, to uncover how students utilized representations when evaluating the plausibility of a proposed mechanistic step. The interviews were qualitatively coded for students' use of terminology, explicit and implicit features, and their chaining strategy. The eye tracking data was analyzed using Spearman correlations to compare the proportion of time students viewed curved arrows and their success to the terminology, features, and chaining strategy they used. The proportion of time students spent viewing curved arrows correlated with students' use of generalized terminology and some implicit features, but not students' reasoning nor their success. Additionally, student success correlated with use of generalized terminology and discussion of implicit features. Implications for teaching and research as well as limitations are discussed.