ALGORITHMIC APPROACH TO QUANTITATIVE PROBLEM-SOLVING IN CHEMISTRY

Abstract

Examining students' inclinations to use algorithms and rules to solve a task was a fruitful area of research in chemical education in the last four decades. This research aimed to examine whether students read the task request carefully, considering its meaningfulness, or they approach it mechanically, applying a set of algorithms by default. The research sample consisted of students majoring in chemistry teaching at the University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Sciences who were in their final year of bachelor studies. The study was conducted during two academic years. The main instrument consisted of five quantitative problems, and each of the problems contained deceptive information that made the calculation nonsensical. The results revealed that most students applied an algorithmic approach without paying attention to the meaningfulness of the task requirements. Additionally, it has been shown that students rely heavily on memorizing formulas without a proper understanding of underlying concepts. Keywords: algorithms, conceptual understanding, quantitative problems