HOW WELL STUDENTS SOLVE ESSENTIAL CHEMISTRY CALCULATION TASKS WHEN STARTING THEIR UNIVERSITY STUDIES?
2021
Abstract
In this contribution, the authors focused on freshman university students in chemistry and chemistry education fields' success in chemical calculations as a necessary background for their university studies. Altogether 220 students from four Czech universities were given a set of tasks from five basic chemical calculation types.
Each type was represented in a formulabased and in a word-problem form. The results show some task types were mastered by the majority of students, some, such as pH or calculations from chemistry equations, suggest students do not fulfil the expected outcomes from chemistry, as far as chemistry calculations are concerned.
In this contribution several reasons of the students' failure are discussed.