Investigating changes in students’ attitudes towards organic chemistry: a longitudinal study

Though attitude has been linked to student performance in general chemistry, it is under-researched with relation to organic chemistry. The previous research that has been conducted on students’ attitudes towards organic chemistry has primarily occurred via quantitative approaches, with a current lack of qualitative approaches used to give robust insight into student experiences in organic chemistry. This work, a longitudinal study, builds on a previous qualitative study which investigated students’ attitudes using the Attitude Toward Organic Chemistry (ATOC) instrument. The aim of this study is to investigate how students’ attitudes towards organic chemistry change over time throughout the organic chemistry course sequence. Findings from two cohorts demonstrate that both students’ attitudes and the influences on those attitudes change over time in the course.