Student Achievement in High School Chemistry1

D. P. Lamb,2 W. H. Waggoner and W. G. FindleyUniversity of Georgia^ Athens, Georgia

During the past decade, Americans have become increasingly con-cerned with their educational programs and facilities. In an era inwhich "big science^ has become so commonplace, it is not surprisingto find that much of this concern is directed toward the quality of thescience programs being taught in the school systems. At the highschool level, the physical sciences have received particular attentionand the resulting recommendations have led to the development ofthe well-known CHEM STUDY and CBA programs. Auxiliarystudies have likewise been made in hopes of discovering those factorswhich influence the success of students in chemistry courses, on boththe high school and college levels. Definitive information of this sortwould be of immense value to advisors and curriculum planners.

Interest in this question is not new. The role of the high schoolchemistry course in the college preparatory curriculum has long beendebated by chemical educators. Studies reported by Garrard andGates [I], by Buehler [2], and by Herman [3], indicated that studentswho had taken high school chemistry made better grades in subse-quent college chemistry courses than did those who had not had suchtraining. Hill [4], Kelly [5], Noll [6], Carlin [7], and Bordas [8] sepa-rately came to the conclusion that students with one year of highschool chemistry plus one semester of college chemistry were approxi-mately equivalent to those with no high school chemistry but with afull year’s work at the collegiate level. A more recent study made byHendricks [9] indicated that at the end of the general chemistrycourse in college, no significant differences existed between those whohad high school work in that discipline and those who had not. Thequestion thus would appear to be far from settled and in need of fur-ther study.One point of agreement seems to emerge, however, from these

studies: the high school chemistry course does have some value, albeitof unknown magnitude. If we grant this, then we might hope to mea-sure the extent of this value. King has been quoted recently [10] assaying that many freshmen entering college are better prepared inchemistry and mathematics and can be expected to perform at ahigher level. If such enhanced proficiency is, in fact, the case, then itshould be detectable by means of a suitable testing instrument.

1 Taken from a D.Ed. Thesis by D. P. Lamb, 1965. Presented in part at the Southeast-Southwest RegionalMeeting of the American Chemical Society, Memphis, Tennessee, December, 1965.

2 Present address: Department of Chemistry, Campbell College, Buies Creek, North Carolina.

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222 School Science and Mathematics

Ideally, such testing should be done twice. Administered prior to histaking a chemistry course in college, the test would hopefully evaluatethe knowledge of specific chemical concepts acquired by the student inhigh school. A second evaluation, following completion of the collegecourse, would permit correlation of high school training with achieve-ment on the collegiate level.

This present paper reports on the results of a study of the formertype: i.e., on a test devised to determine the residual chemical knowl-edge of beginning college chemistry students. Where possible, theidentification of those factors which might influence this knowledgewas attempted. The follow-up study on the actual achievement of thissame group will be reported in a future paper.Those students registered for the beginning chemistry courses at

the University of Georgia (Chemistry 111 or 121) during the 1964-65academic year were selected as test subjects. Information on theireducational backgrounds was gathered from questionnaires whichwere completed by the students at the start of the course. Table Ilists the types of information obtained in this manner. Additionaldata in the form of high school averages and the scores of both theverbal and mathematics parts of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT)were gotten from the university records office.

TABLE 1. DATA FROM STUDENT QUESTIONNAIRE

(1) Name (2) Age (3) Sex(4) High School attended (5) Dates of attendance(6) Did/did not take high school chemistry(7) If did take high school chemistry:

(a) Number of years of chemistry taken(b) Course(s) taken during grade(s)(c) Textbook(s) used

(8) Science courses, exclusive of chemistry, taken in high school(9) Mathematics courses taken in high school

(10) Have/have not previously taken college chemistry(11) Science courses, exclusive of chemistry, taken in college(12) Mathematics courses taken in college

Data on 855 students were collected initially. This figure was de-creased by eliminating those who had taken previous college work inchemistry, those whose high school chemistry had been taken prior to1960, and those out-of-state transfer students whose records couldnot be completed. The remaining test sample of 601 students con-sisted of 388 males and 213 females. Within this group, 512 studentshad taken one year of high school chemistry, 38 students had takentwo years of high school chemistry, and 51 students had had noprevious chemistry courses.

Achievement in Chemistry ^3

TABLE II. TEST CONCEPTS AND STUDENT RESPONSE

QuestionNumber

1234567891011121314151617181920212223242526272829303132333435363738394041424344454647484950

Concept

Meaning of a formulaRadiochemistryKinetics of gasesSolution strengthsActivity of the halogensPreparation of hydrogenOccurrence of hydrogenArrhenius theoryPeriodic LawDefinition of densityRelationships among formulaeDefinition of valenceChemical properties of oxygenPreparation of oxygenProperties of metalsCovalent bonding and electronsStructure of solidsElectrolysis of waterElectromotive serieslonization potentialComposition of isotopesAtoms and ionsHydroxyl ion concentrationDefinition of catalystEquivalent weightCritical stateGay-Lussac^s LawAvogadro’s HypothesisOxidizing/reducing agentsNeutralization reactionSaturated solutionsStandard solutionsSolubility theoryWeak/strong electrolytesNomenclatureNomenclature, Stock systemElectron configurationElectron configuration/bondingCombined gas law problemNormality of solution problemThermochemistry problemYield problemEmpirical formula problemMolarity of solution problemFaraday’s Law problemCompletion of reaction equationBalancing of equationBalancing of redox equationBalancing of ionic equationCompletion of equation

Per CentCorrect

51506722464554414050*20372629311720704542321011*9012*3510*595637501421293233221212*5*14*15*13*8*6*

28*33*13*10*21*

* Required some mathematical manipulation.

224 School Science and Mathematics

Information about the knowledge of chemistry posssessed by thestudents was obtained by means of a 60-minute, 50-item multiplechoice test developed especially for this study. The specific questionsused were selected only after analyzing the results obtained fromseveral preliminary forms of the final test. The chemical conceptstested are listed in Table II and will be recognized as including manyof those commonly recommended for inclusion in general chemistrycourses. A computer program (TSSA, Test Scorer and StatisticalAnalyzer) developed by Wolf and Klopfer of the University of Chi-cago was used to analyze the raw data. Quantitative measures of anumber of items were thus determined including the following: per-cent response to each choice in all questions, percent difficulty of eachquestion, raw and corrected mean scores, standard deviations andstandard errors of means. The relationships among several sets offactors were evaluated by means of the analysis of variance tech-nique.

Table III shows some general test results. The specific results ob-tained by the group on individual questions are shown in the lastcolumn of Table II.

TABLE III. GENERAL TEST RESULTS

Variable Mean StandardDeviation

Raw ScoreCorrected ScoreRange of Scores:Test Reliability:

15.649.82

-3 to 39*0.824f

6.837.06

(50 possible)

* Negative scores resulted from grading formula: Score = (Right)�(Wrong/4).f Kuder Richardson Formula §20.

Several of these results are worth noting. Ninety percent of thestudents correctly answered Question 24 which involved the definitionof a catalyst, and yet only one-third of the group was able to correctlymatch the formula and the name of a simple compound using eitherthe common nomenclature (Question 35) or the Stock nomenclaturesystem (Question 36). Sixteen of the fifty questions were correctlyanswered by less than 20% of the students. It will come as no surpriseto experienced teachers to note that a large proportion of the questionswhich the students found to be most difficult (12 of the 16 mentionedabove) were those requiring some mathematical manipulation.The computer program utilized in this study permitted an analysis

of variance treatment of independent variables and of various sets offactors. Those factors which correlated most significantly with thetest scores made by those students who had taken high school chem-

Achievement in Chemistry 225

istry were the following: high school average, SAT mathematicsscore, and SAT verbal score at the 0.01 probability level: age, collegescience courses, and college mathematics courses at the 0.05 proba-bility level. The other factors examined were found not to correlateto any significant degree with the test scores.Based upon the findings of this study, the following conclusions

appear to be warranted:(1) The value of a high school chemistry course is questionable.(2) The merits of two years of high school chemistry, as opposed to

a single year’s work, is unproved.(3) The older students, whether or not they had taken chemistry in

high school, made the better grades on this test.(4) The students who had taken mathematics and science courses

(other than chemistry) in college prior to beginning their study ofchemistry, made the better grades on this test.

(5) The students who had the better academic records, as evi-denced by higher high school averages, higher SAT mathematicsscores, and/or higher SAT verbal scores, made the better grades onthis test.

Several interesting implications stem from these findings. Highschool chemistry courses should place more emphasis on the quantita-tive aspects of chemistry, particularly the working of problems. Inreporting on his study of Russian students entering Moscow Univer-sity, Volodina [11] made a similar statement! At the college level,the sectioning of students within a freshman chemistry course mightwell use such criteria as high school grade averages and/or SATscores. For the less promising student, it might even be suggested thathe delay his study of chemistry until he has had other science andmathematics courses. Assuming the programs of study would permitsuch a delay, this could be accomplished by including mathe-matics among the prerequisites for chemistry courses.This study has provided some answers but it has also raised ques-

tions. It is hoped that chemical educators will continue to gather suchdata.

LITERATURE CITED[1] GARRARD, I. D., and GATES, T. B., J. Chem. Educ., 6: 514 (1929).[2] BUEHLER, C. A., J. Chem. Educ., 6: 510 (1929).[3] HERMAN, G. A., J. Chem. Educ., 8: 1376 (1931).[4] HILL, L. 0., J. Chem. Educ., 12: 323 (193<5).[5] KELLY, J. B., Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Kentucky,

Lexington, 1953.[6] NOLL, V. H., J. Chem. Educ., 15: 285 (1938).[7] CARLIN, J. J., Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Fordham University, New

York, 1955.[8] BORDAS, C. W., Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Pennsylvania State Uni-

versity, University Park, 1957.

226 School Science and Mathematics

[9] HENDRICKS, B. O’N., Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University ofGeorgia, Athens, 1962.

[10] KING, L. C., J. Chem. Educ., 41: 127 (1964).[11] VOLODINA, M. A., J. Soviet Educ., 4: 47 (1962).

A Confusing Problem Involving Approximate Computation

August H. Arndt and Cecil B. ReadCentral Michigan University, Mount Pleasant^ Michigan

In discussing approximate computation, many texts give essen-tially the following rule for operations other than addition or sub-traction :

Round each number to one more significant digit than the num-ber having the least accuracy; round the final result to the samenumber of significant digits as contained in the number having theleast accuracy.

Suppose we apply this rule to the following problem: What is thehypotenuse of a right triangle with legs 2 feet and 124 feet? By theabove rule, we round the longer leg to 1.2 X 102. Apparently the hypot-enuse is shorter than the longer leg. Are you prepared to give an exp-lanation satisfactory to your students?

This problem was brought to mind through a discussion of accu-racy and precision in a class at Wurtsmith Air Force Base in Michi-gan. An alert airman presented essentially the same problem to theclass and was convinced that there was a fallacy in the above statedrule for approximate computation.

LIFE-PROOF GRASS SOUGHT FOR AUSTRALIAN AIRPORTSThe Australian Department of Civil Aviation has asked Government scientists

to come up with a substitute for grass at airports. The material must be not onlycheap, but ^incapable of supporting life." The object is to keep birds away bymaking airports biological deserts.The snag with grass is that, while it inexpensively prevents soil erosion at air-

ports, it provides seeds for birds to eat and attracts insects. Concreting or tar-sealing the huge areas that airports cover is too expensive. The problem is to finda cheap material, one that also has some of the advantages of grass, such as hold-ing down dust.The Government anticipates that it may take years to find the ideal solution.

Meanwhile, research to find a safe and effective insecticide to use on airport grassis continuing.To make matters worse, another bird has been added to the list of airport

hazards. This is the nocturnal curlew which feeds on insects attracted to runwaylights.A possible solution being investigated is to fit filters to the airport lights to

remove their attraction for insects.