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Beyond the beaker: students’ use of a scaffold to

connect observations with the particle level in the
Cite this: DOI: 10.1039/d0rp00206b
organic chemistry laboratory
Liz Keiner and Nicole Graulich *
Published on 02 October 2020. Downloaded on 10/20/2020 9:45:58 PM.

Received 10th July 2020,
Accepted 2nd October 2020
DOI: 10.1039/d0rp00206b
rsc.li/cerp
Understanding ongoing chemical processes in the laboratory requires constant shifting between
different representational levels—the macroscopic, submicroscopic, and symbolic levels—and analysis of
the various mechanistic features of each of these levels. Thus, the ability to explain observations of
chemical phenomena with regard to their submicroscopic levels in the laboratory is a key requirement.
Research shows that students have difficulty in discerning and comprehending the meaning and
visualization of the submicroscopic level. Traditional laboratory instruction often fails to help students
discern the relationship between their observations and the corresponding chemical processes.
Consequently, there is a high demand for new teaching strategies which address these issues.
Therefore, we developed and implemented a scaffold for the organic laboratory and tested it in a
research study using qualitative methods. The scaffold encourages students to purposefully separate and
connect the macroscopic and submicroscopic representational levels. The implementation of the
scaffold was accompanied by semi-structured pre- and post-interviews with students (N = 22) and an
analysis of students’ work with the scaffold in the laboratory. We analysed students’ sense-making
approach while reflecting on organic syntheses before and after working with the scaffold, and
characterized changes in their approach. The findings emphasize the need to develop further resources
to support students’ understanding of the submicroscopic level. Implications of these findings for
research and teaching to foster meaningful learning in the organic laboratory are discussed.

Introduction
Learning and teaching in the laboratory is a core component
of chemistry education and has the potential to enrich the
formation of science concepts (Hofstein and Lunetta, 1982;
Johnstone, 1991; Bretz, 2019; Molvinger et al., 2020). Laboratory
teaching aims at meeting numerous learning objectives required
to successfully grasp practical syntheses, connect theory presented
in lectures with laboratory observations, and understand the
processes ‘‘beyond the beaker’’ (Bretz, 2019; Walker et al., 2019;
Czysz et al., 2020).
Most laboratory curricula still employ ‘‘cookbook’’ procedures
that require students to follow the recipe, stepwise, in order to
synthesize the desired product. Consequently, students acquire
limited and superficial knowledge about procedures and
chemical processes (Hofstein and Lunetta, 1982; Domin, 1999;
Galloway and Bretz, 2015) and lose the connection between the
theory taught in lectures and the practical work of the laboratory
Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Institute of Chemistry Education,
Heinrich-Buff-Ring 17, 35392 Giessen, Germany.
E-mail: Nicole.Graulich@didaktik.chemie.uni-giessen.de
(Reid and Shah, 2007; Collison et al., 2012). While in the lab, the
processes beyond the beaker may not be discussed thoroughly
enough to help students develop robust understanding of
processes at the macroscopic and submicroscopic levels and
to translate between them (Gabel and Bunce, 1984; Johnstone,
2000; Gkitzia et al., 2019; Sumfleth and Nakoinz, 2019).
Students’ difficulties in understanding and representing the
nature of matter at the individual representational levels,
and especially at the submicroscopic level, is a well-known
challenge in chemistry education (Johnstone, 1982; Ben-Zvi
et al., 1986; Griffiths and Preston, 1992; Kozma and Russell,
1997; Gilbert and Treagust, 2009a, 2009b; Cheng and Gilbert,
2017; Faulconer et al., 2018).
Besides the challenge of transitioning between represen-
tational levels, students also struggle to fully account for
underlying mechanisms when analysing laboratory work-up
procedures in organic chemistry. While they are able to
identify the respective entities, they miss the properties and
activities that produce a given phenomenon (Keiner and
Graulich, 2020). Although research emphasizes the need to
explicitly communicate each level and to connect the macro-
scopic and submicroscopic levels in a meaningful way, the

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potential for connecting macroscopic observations and
analysing the submicroscopic level often goes untapped in
traditional labs.
Increased awareness of this untapped potential has led to
the implementation of various learning approaches to support
students’ laboratory work in chemistry education. Researchers
have developed additional instructional media to improve
the teaching in organic laboratories. Pölloth et al. (2020), for
example, created a library of online videos to prepare students
for the upcoming laboratory techniques and syntheses in the
laboratory. They could show that the videos have a positive
impact on students’ self-concept of ability and that students
show an increase of knowledge in a know-how test on labora-
tory techniques (Pölloth et al., 2020). Furthermore, there has
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been an increase in the use of digital badges (Hennah and
Seery, 2017) and student-generated videos in chemistry labora-
tories (Schmidt-McCormack et al., 2017; Seery et al., 2017;
Gallardo-Williams et al., 2020). In the organic teaching labora-
tory, for example, digital media applications, such as virtual
reality, become more and more important (Ferrell et al., 2019).
Virtual reality allows immersive interactions with a dynamic
molecular world and engage students in exploring molecular
structures, motions, and particle interactions. Such virtual
reality applications could enable students to understand and
visualize the invisible chemical processes beyond the beaker.
Other research groups focused on specific practical laboratory
techniques and developed laboratory instructions for these
techniques. For example, meaningful learning strategies for
liquid–liquid extractions were developed and tested
(Assadieskandar et al., 2020; Wu et al., 2020). Other approaches
include restructuring the curriculum to foster students’ cognitive
and practical skills (Seery et al., 2018; Lipton, 2020) and mixed
approaches with tutorials and practical work (Molvinger et al.,
2020). Supasorn et al. (2008) tested the impact of a pre-laboratory
organic extraction simulation on comprehension and attitudes of
undergraduate chemistry students. This instructional approach
aimed at helping students to visualize extraction concepts at the
molecular level, and afterwards to connect these concepts with
the respective macroscopic observations. The pre-lab activity and
the animations were limited to the extraction steps and did not
presented further synthesis steps.
Other classroom interventions or initiatives, such as the
Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) and Process-Oriented Guided
Inquiry Learning (POGIL), focused on a well guided and struc-
tured prompting to support students in making sense of their
laboratory work. The Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) (Schroeder
and Greenbowe, 2008; Stephenson and Sadler-McKnight, 2016),
a laboratory report format is based on a learning cycle whereby
students explore concepts to look for trends or patterns, rather
than to verify an expected outcome (Lawson, 1989; Keys et al.,
1999; Lawson, 2001). Students who used the SWH format per-
formed significantly better on an American Chemical Society
(ACS) standardized exam (Hand et al., 2004), as well as on
in-class lecture exams and quizzes (Burke et al., 2006; Greenbowe
et al., 2007). Another widespread approach in chemistry education
is the implementation of Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry
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Learning (POGIL) activities in the expository laboratory. The
effectiveness of POGIL in general, and particularly in organic
chemistry (Schroeder and Greenbowe, 2008; Vishnumolakala
et al., 2017), was evidenced by improved student performance
and a corresponding decrease in the number of students
withdrawing from the course (Farrell et al., 1999; Spencer,
1999; Stegall et al., 2016).
A recent study emphasized the metacognitive aspect of using
the representational levels. Thomas (2017) described a classroom
intervention in which the teacher used the term ‘triangulation’ as
an expression to stimulate metacognitive reflection in students to
consider the importance and use of the three representational
levels for learning chemistry. In this study, students improved
their understanding due to this metacognitive reflection, however,
students’ views of the importance and the cognitive processes
associated with it varied across individuals.
The above approaches were successful in helping students
understand and explain the underlying process of their
lab procedures. However, the ability to reflect on and make
connections between the macroscopic and the submicroscopic
representational levels in a laboratory setting has not yet been
explored as an in-lab means to support students’ understanding.
Based on the ongoing discussion of students’ difficulties
in the organic laboratory, we designed and implemented a
scaffold that aims at encouraging students to consciously
separate and connect the macroscopic and submicroscopic
representational levels during their practical lab work.
Theoretical framework
Explaining the interactions ‘‘beyond the beaker’’
Chemists need to think ‘‘beyond the beaker’’ in order to
understand the system that, for instance, extracts, purifies,
and transports molecules in the flask (see Fig. 1). To explain
the interactions beyond the beaker, chemists use models at the
particle level. With regard to making inferences, one of the
most powerful and productive ideas in chemistry education was
the introduction of the ‘‘chemistry triplet’’, also called the
‘‘Johnstone triangle’’ (Johnstone, 1982).
Thanks to Johnstone’s triangle, it is common practice to
rationalize chemical phenomena at three levels of representa-
tion—the macroscopic (observable) level, the submicroscopic
(particle) level, and the symbolic level (Gabel et al., 1992;
Johnstone, 1993; Gabel, 1999; Gilbert and Treagust, 2009a, 2009b).
The macroscopic level describes tangible and visible obser-
vations of a phenomenon and is the most accessible level while
conducting experiments in the laboratory. This includes obser-
vations, such as colour changes or the formation of new
products, e.g. gases (Treagust et al., 2003).
The submicroscopic level describes the invisible processes
of a phenomenon, the particle level (see Fig. 1), in terms of the
movement, organization, or collision of particles, electrons,
molecules, or atoms.
To communicate and visualize the observed processes,
chemists commonly use the symbolic level, which includes
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Fig. 1 Thinking ‘‘beyond the beaker’’. An illustration of an observation
(separation of two phases): one possible visualization at the particle level
and an associated description of the sense-making process.
pictorial, algebraic, physical, and computational forms (e.g.
chemical equations, graphs, reaction mechanisms, analogies,
and model kits) (Kozma and Russell, 1997; Russell et al., 1997;
Treagust et al., 2003). The symbolic level can be seen as a
mediator between the macroscopic and submicroscopic level.
Often it cannot be clearly separated from the other representa-
tional levels because both the macroscopic and submicroscopic
levels can be expressed symbolically (Taber, 2002).
Reasoning about chemical phenomena
Analysing a given chemical phenomenon requires going one
level below the visible surface to identify the entities and their
interactions at play in the process (Hempel and Oppenheim,
1948; Salmon, 1984; Machamer et al., 2000; Talanquer, 2010;
Braaten and Windschitl, 2011; Rottman and Keil, 2011; Yeo and
Gilbert, 2014; Krist et al., 2018). In recent years, there has been
increased interest in characterizing and fostering students’
ability to generate mechanistic explanations for phenomena
in science education (Grotzer, 2003; Russ et al., 2008a; Russ
et al., 2008b) and in chemistry education (Becker et al., 2016;
Caspari et al., 2017; Caspari et al., 2018; Talanquer, 2018).
A mechanistic explanation is described in the philosophy of
science as a detailed description of the underlying process
responsible for the phenomenon. Mechanistic explanations
first identify the relevant entities involved in the process, their
properties, the activities in which they are engaged, and their
organization. The activities and the organization of core enti-
ties are responsible for the properties and behaviours of the
system as a whole (Machamer et al., 2000). Usually, accounting
for the underlying interactions of a mechanism refers to the
invisible particulate or molecular level (Sevian and Talanquer,
2014; Becker et al., 2016). Thus, transitioning from the macro-
scopic to the submicroscopic level is a core competency needed
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to progress towards causal mechanistic reasoning (Crandell et al.,
2019; Crandell et al., 2020).
Typically, entities, properties, and activities are conceived as
parts of the submicroscopic level, but each of these parts and
its features are visible macroscopically. In a recent study, we
investigated to what extent students transit between individual
representational levels (macroscopic and submicroscopic)
and characterized the activated mechanistic features at each
of these levels while students were engaged in analysing
laboratory work-up procedures in an organic chemistry lab
(Keiner and Graulich, 2020).
Fig. 2 shows an overview of the features of the respective
representational levels, based on our analysis in a previous
study (Keiner and Graulich, 2020). The findings of this study
revealed that students’ language is dominated by macroscopic
terms and entities and tends not to consider submicroscopic
activities. Only a few students could explain the given pheno-
menon at the submicroscopic level. It became apparent that
students do not seem to know the level at which they are
explaining a phenomenon or how to purposefully connect the
representational levels to make sense of the phenomenon.
Our previous findings (2020) emphasized the need to create
awareness in students that the macroscopic and submicro-
scopic levels both contribute to understanding the phenomenon;
that students need opportunities to connect both levels; and that
students should use their thought processes to evaluate the
objectives of a synthesis step during laboratory work.
Scaffolding reasoning
Scaffolding is an instructional technique that, ideally, enables a
novice to complete a task or problem that he or she could not
have accomplished unassisted (Wood et al., 1976; Belland et al.,
2011). Scaffolding students’ reasoning can be a powerful tool to
help students activate and connect prior knowledge pieces.
A scaffold could as well encourage students to reflect on how
they approached a task in a specific context (Davis, 2000).
Scaffolding can thus combine structuring the cognitive process
of solving a problem with metacognitive and procedural
prompting (Reiser, 2004). Scaffolding enables learners to inter-
nalise the guidance through distributed practice and, even-
tually, self-regulate their cognitive actions. Common features of
a scaffold are: focusing learner’s attention towards a goal,
simplifying the task in a stepwise manner, modelling and
demonstrating, prompting for ongoing diagnosis and assess-
ment, or even prompting the eventual transfer of responsibility
(Reiser, 2004; Puntambekar and Hubscher, 2005; Seel, 2011).
Such prompts or questions could provide students with cues
what knowledge to activate, connect, and include in their
explanation (Kang et al., 2014; Kararo et al., 2019). Prompting
students, for example, could direct student attention to facilitate
awareness of potential knowledge gaps, help them organise their
thoughts, and recognise a need to evaluate the validity of their
solutions (Ge and Land, 2003).
Learning or teaching with a scaffold is commonly a tem-
porary support that is withdrawn when the learner progres-
sively internalizes the scaffold. The cognitive load that a
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Fig. 2 Description of the mechanistic features in general and at the macroscopic and submicroscopic representational levels.
complex task, such as conducting an organic synthesis, may
impose on the learner should be reduced by the scaffold
(Sweller et al., 1998; Kirschner, 2002). Slowly students learn to
independently solve the problem, building up the necessary
reasoning skills and heuristics.
Goals and research questions
Based on our findings in a previous study (Keiner and
Graulich, 2020), we developed a scaffold that purposefully
prompts students to (a) carefully consider their macroscopic
observations and submicroscopic explanations separately, and
(b) connect both levels and judge if they reached their synthesis
goal. In this study we attempt to elicit, qualitatively, whether
the extent to which students’ make use of the scaffold changes
the way they explain organic synthesis on both levels; and
whether they make use of multiple mechanistic features when
explaining organic syntheses. Our study is guided by the
following research questions:
1. To what extent does students’ activation of mechanistic
features (at the macroscopic and submicroscopic levels) change
after they have worked with the scaffold during two organic
syntheses?
2. What kind of sense-making approaches (with regard to
the representational levels) do students use while reasoning
about an organic synthesis before and after working with the
scaffold?
3. To what extent is each student’s individual work with the
scaffold related to a change in his or her sense-making
approach?
The term ‘‘sense-making’’ is widely used in the educational
literature (Fitzgerald and Palincsar, 2019) to express a learner’s
approach to make sense of phenomena. A sense-making process
can be broadly understood as an expression of the learner’s
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underlying mental models while being engaged to make a
continuous effort to comprehend and explain, i.e. to make
sense of a scientific phenomenon. Thus, in this study we
use the term ‘‘sense-making approach’’ to capture students’
approaches to describe and explain chemical phenomena and
the underlying molecular processes.
To answer these research questions, we performed a quali-
tative interview study with chemistry student teachers enrolled
in an organic laboratory course.
Methods
Context and participants
The research study was conducted at a German university in
July and August 2019. Students were recruited on a voluntary
basis from the practical course ‘‘Organic Chemistry Laboratory’’
via in-class announcements. The course is part of the teacher
training programme for student teachers and normally takes
place during the summer break between the fifth and sixth
semesters of their studies. The organic chemistry laboratory
course covers a period of four weeks during which students attend
a lecture from 8:00 am to 10:00 am and work in the lab from 10:00
am to 6:00 pm. Successful completion of the module ‘‘Organic
Chemistry I’’ (OC I) is the prerequisite for participating in the
practical ‘‘Organic Chemistry Laboratory’’ course. The OC I lecture
provides basic knowledge of organic chemistry and discussions
on typical reaction mechanisms (e.g. electrophilic addition
reaction, nucleophilic substitution, radical polymerization,
and esterification).
During the laboratory course, students synthesize six given
compounds through nucleophilic substitutions, electrophilic
additions, or elimination reactions and report the synthesis in
a traditional lab protocol that also requires information on
the mechanism and the obtained yield. Students use typical
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Chemistry Education Research and Practice
laboratory procedures—isolation and purification (e.g. washing
with sodium carbonate, fractional distillation)—for the work-
up. These laboratory techniques are provided in advance in a
written online manual. The protocol used in this laboratory
course does not explicitly encourage students to connect the
different representational levels to each other.
A total of 22 undergraduate chemistry student teachers
(15 female and 7 male) agreed to participate in the study. They
were between 22 and 47 years old (the average age was 24 years)
and were invited via an announcement to students attending a
class lecture or in the laboratory. All students who volunteered
for this study were provided with information about their rights
and the handling of the data; informed consent was obtained
from all participants. Institutional Review Board approval is not
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required at German universities, but the recruitment process
followed ethical guidelines and it was clarified to the students
that they could opt out at any time.
All students provided written informed consent for (a) the
use of transcripts of their interviews by the research team,
(b) the analysis of their data by the research team, and (c) the
use of their data, including their drawings and notes, for
publication. In this study, participants were assigned pseu-
donyms; no identifying information was recorded or scanned
that would allow the re-identification of participants’ data.
The interviews were conducted in German, and students’
interview excerpts and written notes were translated from
German to English.
Research instrument
The research instrument consisted of a scaffold (see Fig. 3)
designed to support students’ reflection on macroscopic obser-
vations, the respective submicroscopic level, and the goals of
each individual step of the synthesis (e.g. isolation or purifica-
tion of a given compound). Generally, students concentrate on
the experiment as a whole and pay little attention to the
individual steps (e.g. the purification steps). Since individual
steps are important, we gave students explicit instructions to
focus on these individual steps, collect their observations
during the synthesis, and reflect on the ongoing chemical
processes of each synthesis step at the particle level. As a first
part, students were asked to note the name of the synthesis and
describe the synthesis step they were working on currently.
Second, students were asked to fill in four parts for each
synthesis step:
1. Goal. In the first part, students were instructed to describe
the goal of this synthesis step and explain why they were
working on this step.
2. Observation. After defining the goal of the synthesis step,
students were prompted to describe and visualize their obser-
vations, before, during, and after this step. It should be noted
that some observations did not always differ substantially. For
example, if students mixed two colourless solutions for five
hours and the solution remained colourless, they were not able
to observe any visible changes. Furthermore, students were
instructed to draw a sketch of their observations before and
after the synthesis step, if possible.
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3. Particle level. In the third part, students were prompted
to describe what they had concluded after their observations
(e.g. describe the underlying process of the mechanism of the
reaction). Afterwards, students were prompted to visualize the
process before and after this step at the submicroscopic level.
Students were free to choose whether to draw the particles or
use symbolic representations of the molecules.
4. Conclusion and aim. In the fourth part, students were
prompted to decide, based on their observations and sub-
microscopic explanations, if they had achieved the goal of the
synthesis step. Students could not always assess whether they
had been successful or not because, as in the example with two
colourless solutions, the results were hard to differentiate. After
each of the first three parts, students were asked to rate the
perceived difficulty of filling out these parts of the scaffold.
Unlike the previous three parts, the last step required students
to rate how sure they were that they had achieved the aim of
this synthesis step.
Data collection
This study aims to understand the extent to which a scaffold
administered in an organic laboratory course can stimulate
students to activate mechanistic features and influence their
approach to making sense of synthesis steps. To compare
students’ approaches before and after instruction, the first
author conducted pre- and post-semi-structured interviews.
During these semi-structured interviews, students were
prompted to comment on their experiences in the lab and to
explain, step-by-step, how they carried out one of the six organic
syntheses. Additional questions based on their responses, were
used to engage students in reflecting on the macroscopic or the
submicroscopic level (see Fig. 4).
In our previous work, it became apparent that students
could take shortcuts in explaining a given phenomenon. Thus,
to ensure that we elicited the capabilities, we (a) prompted
students to consider the submicroscopic level when they began
to describe the macroscopic level of the synthesis and
(b) prompted students to consider the macroscopic level when
they began to describe the submicroscopic level. In the pre-
interview, which took place after the second of six completed
syntheses, students were asked to choose one synthesis and
describe it step-by-step.
The decision to give the students the choice to choose which
synthesis and, consequently, which mechanism they would like
to discuss in the interview was made consciously. Giving
students the opportunity to choose one of their two syntheses
was intended to relieve their nervousness during the interview
situation and allowed them to choose a familiar content area.
The syntheses and related mechanisms are very similar. Almost
every synthesis has certain preparatory steps, a main reaction,
and ongoing purification steps. Due to these similarities of the
respective syntheses, we considered it appropriate to allow the
students choose which synthesis they want to explain in the
interview. To answer our research questions, we were more
interested in students’ sense-making approaches when they
explained a synthesis of their choice, than to test them all on
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Fig. 3 The scaffold used in the organic laboratory course for each synthesis step (translated from German).

the same synthesis. We assume that this process helps them The interview typically started with the sentence, ‘‘Please tell
feel at ease with the task, so that the students feel more me in detail what you have done in your organic synthesis and why
comfortable and are willing to share their thoughts. you have done the individual steps’’. After the interview, students

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Fig. 4 Study design.
were introduced to the scaffold and told how to use it during
the next two syntheses (see Fig. 4).
When filling out the worksheet following the interview,
students were told there were multiple possible answers, and
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that we were mainly interested in their imagination and
conceptions of levels, particularly the particle level. To show
them how to use the scaffold in the laboratory, we demon-
strated an exemplary solution to an organic synthesis that was
not part of the course. After introducing the scaffold, the
students used the scaffold for the next two syntheses.
During the lab activity, the first author played the role of a
mediator. She interacted with the students, checked if they
were comfortable with the instructional approach, answered
questions, addressed any uncertainties and arranged the
appointment for the second interview when students had
completed their scaffold assignments. During the lab activity,
a question most frequently asked by students was how detailed
they should describe the individual parts of the scaffold and
how they should depict the processes on the particle level. The
first author advised the students to describe the chemical
phenomena as detailed as possible and to choose which
visualization (e.g. Lewis structures or particle drawings) they
want to use to represent the synthesis step. Overall, students
felt comfortable working with the scaffold and could always
Table 1 Coding rubric for analysis step I: mechanistic features at the macroscopic and submicroscopic levels
Code Student examples
EntityM ‘‘I still have contaminations like water and sulphuric
acid in my flask.’’
PropertyM ‘‘Ethanol is liquid like sulphuric acid. Salicylic acid is
solid.’’
ActivityM ‘‘Sodium chloride is formed, and we still have another
chlorine which splits off.’’
OrganizationM ‘‘I could observe two phases; in the aqueous phase there
is water and sodium chloride, maybe sodium acetate. . .’’
EntityS ‘‘. . .CaCl2 which means, I have Ca2+ and two Cl ions.’’
PropertyS ‘‘. . .the partial positive charged carbon atom in acetic
acid.’’
ActivityS ‘‘The acetate molecule attacks the nucleophile.’’
OrganizationS ‘‘. . .in the aqueous phase we have Na+ and Cl .’’
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consult the first author or have a look at the provided sample
worksheet.
The second interview, after working with the scaffold, had
the same structure and prompts as the first one. In addition, it
included students’ evaluation and perceptions of the scaffold.
During the second interview students were not allowed to use
their scaffold worksheets but could choose again one of the two
syntheses for the interview. Giving students the opportunity
to choose one of their two syntheses again, was intended to
relieve their nervousness and allow them to choose a familiar
content area.
The collected data included transcripts of the two semi-
structured pre-and post-interviews with all students, and scans
of their completed scaffold worksheets and field notes follow-
ing the interviews. The interviews lasted on average 30 minutes.
Data analysis
To acquire deeper understanding of how students interacted
with the scaffold, we conducted a qualitative data analysis. All
interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using the
coding software MAXQDA. To evaluate whether the scaffold led
to changes in students’ approach and to answer our research
questions, we analysed the data using the following steps:
Step I: identifying the activated features of a mechanism. We
used the coding scheme from our previous study (Keiner and
Graulich, 2020), which consists of eight categories, to code the
mechanistic features students would need to activate in their
explanations. Table 1 provides an overview of the codes and a
student example for each coding category. In this part of the
analysis, we coded when and how often students used entities,
properties, organization, and activities at the macroscopic and
submicroscopic representational levels during the pre- and
post-interviews. The features were coded individually. If some-
one mentioned a macroscopic entity (e.g. water), it was coded
Code description
Entities are described by using the name of the substance or naming a
solution of a substance (e.g. reaction educts or products), without
reference to the respective molecule or particle.
Properties are described by reference to an observable physical or
chemical property (e.g. the colour of a substance, the observable pH
value, the aggregate state).
Activities are described by referring to an observable physical or
chemical change of properties, with no reference to molecules or
particles (e.g. an ongoing phase separation).
Organization of entities is described by referring to the temporal
(e.g. stand overnight) and spatial organization (e.g. observation of two
separate phases) of macroscopic entities.
Entities are described by using the name of the particle or referring to
the molecules of a substance (e.g. functional groups, ions, water
molecules).
Properties are described by reference to an invisible physical or
chemical property (e.g. deprotonated entity, aggregate state).
Activities are described by referring to an invisible physical or chemical
transformation which results in a change of properties, with reference
to molecules or particles.
Organization of entities is described by referring to the temporal and
spatial organization (e.g. more H3O+ ions) of submicroscopic entities.
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with the code macroscopic entity (EM). Those features that
students activated frequently or rarely may depend on the type
of organic synthesis in question. After coding each feature, we
counted the frequencies of the total number of coded features
and then calculated different percentages. The given percentages
in the result chapter (e.g. 75% macroscopic; 25% submicroscopic
in the pre-interview) therefore refer to the individual features,
which means that 75% of the overall coded features (like entities,
properties, activities and organization) are labelled as macro-
scopic ones and 25% of the coded features are submicroscopic.
The percentages of the coded mechanistic features overall
students in the pre- and post-interview (e.g. 57% EM; 20% PM. . .)
are related to the total amount of all macroscopic and submicro-
scopic respectively.
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The changes with regard to the activated mechanistic
features from the pre- to the post-interview were explored for
statistical significance using a paired-sample t-test.
Step II: characterizing students by their attempt to make
sense of an organic synthesis. To answer our second research
question, we categorized students by their approach (with
regard to the individual sections of meaning) to making sense
of their chosen organic synthesis at the macroscopic and
submicroscopic representational levels, before and after
working with the scaffold. We assumed that deliberately mak-
ing use of the macroscopic and submicroscopic levels when
explaining a chosen synthesis (as students had done in the lab),
was an indicator of proficiency, whereas a description limited
to the macroscopic level could indicate students’ difficulty with
apprehending multiple levels.
Therefore, we divided the interview transcripts into smaller
content-related ‘‘sections of meaning’’ (e.g. the description of a
phase separation, the evolution of gas, or the main reaction step).
The sections of meaning could be differentiated by an interview
prompt or a content-related change by the student. Such a verbal
section of meaning focuses on one aspect of the observed syn-
thesis (e.g. a phase separation or a distillation process) and can
occur at one or both representational levels. The subdivision into
smaller sections of meaning was useful because the students in
this study did not consistently use just one approach to describe
their synthesis. Depending on the synthesis step, they may have
reasoned on one of the two levels or changed the representational
level in different ways. The subdivision into smaller sections of
meaning provided the opportunity to better compare changes
from the pre- to the post-interview (e.g. the explanation of a phase
separation in both interviews). Consequently, we first separated
or divided each section of meaning in students’ interview
transcripts. The first part of analysis step II did not include any
coding of the transcripts, but only the division of the interviews
into content-related sections of meaning.
To better characterize students’ sense-making approaches,
we were interested in the type of transition used to explain their
synthesis steps in such a section of meaning. Therefore, we
categorized, for example, whether a transition occurred from
one representational level to another and whether this shift was
caused by the interviewer’s prompt or was made freely and
deliberately by the student.
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This process resulted in various combinations, such as from
the macroscopic (M) to the submicroscopic (S) level without a
prompt (M–S), from the macroscopic to the submicroscopic
level after a prompt (M–P–S) or staying at the macroscopic level
(MM). The individual sections of meaning were then coded with
these three occurring combinations (MS; MM; MPS) between the
macroscopic and submicroscopic representational level. In the
next step of analysis, we determined the distribution of the respec-
tive transitions for each student in the pre- and post-interviews.
Therefore, we counted how often students used which approach to
explain the synthesis steps. For instance, we counted the amount
of sections of meaning in which a student explained the chemical
phenomena at the macroscopic level (sense-making approach I),
in which the student transitioned after being prompted to the
submicroscopic level (sense-making approach II), and in which the
student switched to the submicroscopic level without a prompt
(sense-making approach III). We, thus, generated a bar chart for
each student, showing the respective percentages of each approach
in the pre- and post-interview (cf. Fig. 12). The changes in students’
sense-making approaches from the pre- to the post-interview were
explored for statistical significance using a paired-sample t-test.
Step III: evaluating students’ individual work with the
scaffold. To explore a potential correlation between students’
sense-making approach on the sections of meaning and their
individual work with the scaffold, we created a rubric that
categorizes students’ qualitative description of the reaction
process in the scaffold worksheet. For this purpose, we differ-
entiated between fully described (2 points), partially described
(1 point), and insufficiently described (0 points).
Furthermore, we divided a synthesis into three main parts
(see Fig. 5). These were the preparatory steps, the main reaction
step, and the work-up procedures (e.g. purification steps). For
each of these three parts, we rated students’ description of the
synthesis steps with the rubric by focusing on the completeness
of the descriptions and on the correct separation of the
macroscopic and submicroscopic levels. This rating indicates
whether students made the correct observations of the respec-
tive step at the macroscopic level and described and visualized
it at the particle level.
Unreadable or incomprehensible (insufficient) descriptions
were awarded 0 points; partial descriptions of the individual
synthesis step, with correct differentiations between the macro-
scopic and submicroscopic levels and with few aspects missing
or incorrect, were awarded 1 point; full and correct descriptions
of the synthesis step were awarded 2 points.
To assess how students worked with the scaffold overall,
we summed up their points on both syntheses and calculated a
total score. The total score may differ depending on the
described organic synthesis because not every synthesis has a
‘‘preparatory step’’. Some organic syntheses start directly
with the ‘‘main reaction step’’. We therefore calculated the
percentage of available points achieved by each student. Based
on the attained percentage, we divided the students into three
‘‘groups’’, to indicate how students worked, in general, with the
scaffold. Zero to 33% represented group I (mainly insufficient
description); 34% to 66% represented group II (mainly partial
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Fig. 5 Illustrative example of the rubric for use of the scaffold. In this case, the student obtained ten out of twelve points and therefore achieved 83% in
total, indicating that the synthesis steps were fully described in the scaffold worksheet.
description); and 67% to 100% represented group III (mainly
full description). Fig. 5 gives an overview of this analysis.
The first author (PhD candidate with a master’s degree in
chemistry education) coded the entire data set from all rounds
of coding and analysis. During the data analysis, the authors
regularly discussed the coding scheme. Furthermore, constant
discussions with the whole research group were conducted.
Results and discussions
We analysed students’ interview data and written work and
characterized different sense-making approaches in students’
sections of meaning and the related changes with regard to the
scaffold worksheet. Overall, students demonstrated increased
understanding of organic synthesis in their post-scaffold inter-
views. To facilitate the interpretation and discussion of the results
in accordance with our research questions, we divided the results
into three parts. The first part describes students’ activation of
mechanistic features while explaining their organic synthesis in
the pre and post-scaffold interview. The second part illustrates
students’ sense-making approach in the sections of meaning. The
third part illustrates students’ work with the scaffold and the
related changes in their sense-making approach.
To what extent did students’ activation of mechanistic
features (at the macroscopic and submicroscopic levels) change
after they worked with the scaffold during a synthesis?
All features of a mechanism were activated at least once by each
student during their explanation of the synthesis, but with varying
frequencies. Because naming a property, organization, or activity is
generally accompanied by a reference to an entity, it is unsurprising
that entity was the mechanistic feature used most at both levels.
Our analysis revealed that students activate, on average,
more macroscopic features than submicroscopic features.
Close to equal percentages were obtained in the pre-interview
(macroscopic features 75%, submicroscopic features 25%) and
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post-interview (macroscopic features 73%, submicroscopic
features 27%). In the post-interview, students included more
reasoning about the underlying chemical processes, as indi-
cated by an increase of the feature activity. Fig. 6 shows an
overview of the percentage of activated features in the pre- and
post-interview. It is apparent that in both pre- and post-
interviews, entities were activated most frequently (pre: EM:
57%; ES: 69%; post: EM: 61%; ES: 69%), followed by properties
(pre: PM: 20%; PS: 14%; post: PM: 17%; PS: 14%), organization
(pre: OM: 15%; OS: 8%; post: OM: 14%; OS: 10%), and activities
(pre: AM: 8%; AS: 9%; post: AM: 8%; AS: 16%).
With regard to the activation of individual features at the
representational levels, we did not observe any major differ-
ences except for two submicroscopic features—the entities and
activities (see the dotted lines in Fig. 6). The submicroscopic
activity was activated, on average, twice as often in the post-
interview (16%) as in the pre-interview (8%). This increase is
significant (p o 0.05) and has a large effect size (Cohen’s d =
0.812). With the exception of two students, all students showed
an increase in this mechanistic feature in the post-interview.
The statistical analysis of the other features as well as the
confidence intervals are presented in the appendix (cf. Table 3).
Consequently, they activated considerably fewer submicro-
scopic entities ( 9%) in the post-interview. One can interpret
Fig. 6 Percentage of mechanistic features activated in students’ sense-
making approaches in the pre- (left) and post- (right) interview. The blue
coloured elements indicate macroscopic features and the red coloured
the submicroscopic features.
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this finding as an increase in process-oriented thinking in the
post-interviews. This is a promising finding as we found in one
of our previous studies (Keiner and Graulich, 2020) that stu-
dents, when prompted to explain organic work-up procedures,
tend to focus more on static entities and less on process-
oriented features like the activity. Moreira et al. (2019) found
that students tend to explain chemical phenomena without
reference to the activity. They concluded that students’ expla-
nations incorporate activities of one or more entities of the
system only at a higher level of sophistication, indicating a
change from a static to a more dynamic perspective of the
phenomenon. In our previous study (Keiner and Graulich, 2020)
we confirmed the observation that students often struggle to
describe the activities that give rise to entities or properties that
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are responsible for earlier or subsequent activities. The following
example illustrates students’ use of the feature activity.
Fig. 7 Illustrative quotes from Darly as he thought through a nucleophilic
attack in the pre- and post-interviews.
Specifically, we compared student Darly’s explanation from
the pre- and post-interview in which he worked out the nucleo-
philic attack (the main reaction step) in two different organic
syntheses. In the pre-interview, Darly listed many properties
(e.g. ‘‘partially negative; partially positively charged; positively
charged’’) without reference to the formation (i.e. the respective
activities). In the post-interview, he once again mentioned the
comparable properties of entities (e.g. ‘‘negatively charged;
positively polarized C-atom; oxygen is electronegative’’). However,
in contrast to the pre-interview, he included more descriptions
about the formation of the properties (‘‘attracts the electrons’’)
and the activity of the entity (‘‘attacks as a nucleophile’’).
To summarize our findings for the first research question,
we noted that students activated all mechanistic features, but
with different frequencies. They most frequently mentioned
entities, followed by properties, organization, and, least fre-
quently, activities. The high percentage of activated entities in
both cases can be attributed to the fact that naming a property,
organization, or activity is generally accompanied by a refer-
ence to an entity. Therefore, it is not surprising that the most
used mechanistic feature at both levels was the entity. Although
students activated, predominantly, the same features after
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working with the scaffold, we observed small qualitative differ-
ences in their explanations (see Fig. 7).
What kind of sense-making approaches (with regard to the
representational levels) do students use while reasoning about an
organic synthesis before and after working with the scaffold?
To answer this question, we examined how students made
sense of organic synthesis steps with regard to their transition
from the macroscopic level to the submicroscopic level, and
analysed whether their sense-making changed after working
with the scaffold. Depending on how students explained the
reaction process in the section of meaning, different transitions
were observable (see Fig. 8). The sections of meaning fell into
one of three categories: students who transitioned from the
macroscopic to the submicroscopic level independently, those
who did so after a prompt by the interviewer, and those who
remained at the macroscopic level even after a prompt. It is
important to note that none of the students began their
explanation of a phenomenon at the submicroscopic level.
The sections of meaning categories are as follows:
Sense-making approach I. The first approach that character-
ized a section of meaning was a student explaining chemical
synthesis macroscopically using macroscopic features. Even
after a prompt to consider the particle level, the explanation
remained at the macroscopic level and did not include sub-
microscopic features.
Sense-making approach II. This sense-making approach
characterized those sections in which students analysed a
synthesis step at the macroscopic level then, after a prompt
from the interviewer, transitioned to the submicroscopic repre-
sentational level and activated the submicroscopic features.
Sense-making approach III. The third sense-making approach
characterized sections of meaning in which students described the
chemical phenomenon at the macroscopic level and transitioned,
without being prompted, to the submicroscopic level.
In the following section, we illustrate the sense-making
approach with student examples. Fig. 9 shows student Carol’s
Fig. 8 Three sense-making approaches which characterize students’
sections of meaning in explaining synthesis steps.
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Fig. 9 Carol’s sense-making approach (I) to the aggregate states and the
dissolving process in the pre-interview.
sense-making approach for the dissolving process of chloroc-
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tane with sodium acetate and methyltrioctylamine. First, he
described the macroscopic appearance (aggregate states) of the
substances (‘‘liquid’’; ‘‘colourless’’; ‘‘solid’’). Carol made no
reference to the particle level of the different aggregate states
(e.g. how the particles are arranged in the different aggregate
states—closely packed or separated from each other).
Carol was first explicitly prompted to explain his observation
(the dissolution process) at the particle level. However, he
described his observations only at the macroscopic level (‘‘it
was relatively lumpy’’; ‘‘it mixed better’’), and did not mention
the dissolving process at the particle level as a way to activate
submicroscopic features, even after being prompted (‘‘when you
consider the particle level’’) on the meaning of the different
aggregate states at the particle level.
The following example of student Gabriel (Fig. 10) illustrates
sense-making approach II. His sense-making approach dealt
with the different aggregate states of the molecules involved in
his organic synthesis. First, Gabriel named the different aggre-
gate states (‘‘solid‘‘; ‘‘liquid’’) without further explanations.
After an interview prompt to consider the aggregate states at
the particle level, Gabriel transitioned to the submicroscopic
level, activated submicroscopic features (‘‘particles’’), and
explained the different aggregate states with reference to the
organization of the particles at the submicroscopic level
(e.g. ‘‘particles are more distant from each other’’; ‘‘particles are
closer together’’).
Compared to sense-making approach I, Gabriel started to
explain his observations at the particle level after the prompt. In
Fig. 10 Gabriel’s sense-making approach (Scalco et al., 2018) to the
aggregate states in the pre-interview.
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Fig. 11 Darly’s sense-making approach (III) as he describes the separation
of two phases in the pre-interview.
sections of meaning that correspond to sense-making approach II,
students tend to consider chemical phenomena at the macroscopic
level and transition to the submicroscopic level after a prompt.
The third sense-making approach that emerged from students’
sections of meaning is illustrated by the example of student Darly
(see Fig. 11). He described a phase separation and immediately
started to make sense of his observation at the particle level,
without an explicit prompt. He then transitioned from the macro-
scopic level (‘‘I observe two phases’’) to the submicroscopic level,
activated submicroscopic mechanistic features, and explained his
observation of organic synthesis at the particle level. Overall,
sense-making approach I mostly characterized students’ explana-
tions of their chosen organic synthesis in the pre- and post-interview
(see Table 2), followed by sense-making approach II. Sense-making
approach III was only present in a few sections of meaning. However,
the occurrences of sense-making approach III increased slightly
between the pre-scaffold and post-scaffold interviews—1% -
9%—after students had worked with the scaffold.
To what extent is a student’s individual work with the
scaffold related to a change in the sense-making approach?
To better understand how much students’ sense-making
approach in the section of meaning had changed, we rated
students’ description of the reaction process in the scaffold
worksheet (cf. Appendix 2, Fig. 16), with reference to the rubric
(see Fig. 5), and correlated their descriptions to any changes
between the pre- and post-scaffold interviews. Fig. 12 shows an
overview of the changes in each of the three sense-making
groups, in combination with the ratings of students’ description
in the scaffold worksheet.
We evaluated the increase of the sense-making approaches
from the pre- to post-interview statistically. The data show a
statistically significant increase (p o 0.01) and a large effect
size (Cohen’s d = 0.877) for sense-making approach III. The
Table 2 Percentage of students’ sense-making approaches in the pre-
and post-interview
Approach I Approach II Approach III
Pre-interview 63% 36% 1%
Post-interview 60% 31% 9%
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comparison of sense-making approach I and II as well as the
confidence intervals are presented in the appendix (cf. Table 4).
The eight students in group I (green box) described the
synthesis steps in the scaffold more or less fully. The twelve
students in group II (yellow box) described the synthesis steps
in the scaffold only partially. Only the two students in group III
(red box) described the steps insufficiently. Fig. 12 also shows
the percentage of sense-making approaches I-III in the
pre-scaffold interviews and the respective percentages in the
post-scaffold interviews (visualized by different coloured bars,
Fig. 12). We observed a relationship between the completeness
of the description in the scaffold worksheet and the sense-
making approaches in the pre- and post-scaffold interviews.
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Fig. 12 Comparison of the percentage of sense-making approaches in
the pre- and post-scaffold interviews of each student. Students are
organized according to their descriptions in the scaffold—full (green),
partial (yellow), and insufficient (red).
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We noted that students who fully described the synthesis
steps in the scaffold worksheet (green box) usually showed an
increase in sense-making approach III in the post-scaffold
interview; this result is highlighted with red boxes (see
Fig. 12). This means that these students tended to describe
their chosen synthesis in the post-scaffold interview at the
macroscopic and submicroscopic levels without being explicitly
prompted. Furthermore, we noticed a small increase in the
number of students who explained the submicroscopic level after
a prompt, whereas in the pre-scaffold interview they often
remained at the macroscopic level even after being prompted.
Students who partially described the synthesis steps in the scaffold
(yellow box) showed few changes in their sense-making approach.
During the pre-scaffold interviews, only one student was explain-
ing a phenomenon using sense-making approach III. By contrast,
during the post-scaffold interviews, at least three students used
sense-making approach III. Further, some students made use of
sense-making approach II, which indicates that they explained the
synthesis steps at the submicroscopic level after being prompted.
Only two students insufficiently described the synthesis
steps in the scaffold (red box), and we observed an increased
use of sense-making approach III by one of them.
Based on the use of the scaffold (Fig. 2), students who
described the reaction processes in detail tended to switch
more often to the submicroscopic level, without prompts. Some
of these students explained their syntheses more reflective and
could better reactivate their knowledge from the work with the
scaffold. Students who struggled to fully explain the reaction
processes tended to switch less often to the submicroscopic
level. This indicates that the scaffold may encourage students
to consider the submicroscopic level.
Maggie’s case illustrates these changes for group 1 in the
post-scaffold interview. Fig. 13 and 15 show excerpts from
Maggie’s interview transcripts, and Fig. 14 shows parts of her
scaffold worksheet.
Maggie fully described the synthesis steps in the scaffold
worksheet but only started to use sense-making approach III
in the post-scaffold interview (see Fig. 12). During her pre-
interview, Maggie reasoned about the separation of two phases
(synthesis—nucleophilic substitution of octyl acetate). She was
then prompted by the interviewer to explain the formation of
Fig. 13 Maggie’s sense-making approach (I) in the pre-scaffold interview
where she reasoned over the formation of two phases.
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Fig. 14 An excerpt from Maggie’s scaffold worksheet in which she
describes the formation of two phases. Sketches and her description are
translated from German into English.
the two phases in more detail but her thought processes
remained at the macroscopic level.
In her explanation Maggie named macroscopic properties
(‘‘hydrophobic and hydrophilic’’) and said that the two properties
are important for the separation of two phases ‘‘because of the
characteristics of miscibility’’. She did not explain what hydro-
phobic or hydrophilic meant at the particle level. Furthermore,
she did not explain which functional groups were responsible
for the formation of two phases at the submicroscopic level
or how the functional groups relate to the formation of two
phases. In her scaffold worksheet Maggie mentioned these
missing properties and activities at the submicroscopic level
(synthesis—nucleophilic substitution of tert-butyl chloride).
She also described the macroscopic properties (‘‘colourless’’,
‘‘clear’’, ‘‘liquid’’, ‘‘observation of two phases after shaking’’). With
reference to the submicroscopic level, she alluded to the process of
the formation of two phases by mentioning that the ‘‘OH group is
protonated’’ (PS) and therefore ‘‘splits off’’ (AS). Next she described
‘‘the attack’’ (AS) of the chloride on the ‘‘positively charged’’ (PS)
‘‘C-atom’’ (ES). Maggie then considered the polarities of the resulting
entities and the formation of the two phases. She said that ‘‘butyl
chloride is largely non-polar and therefore not soluble in polar
mixtures’’. Additionally, she visualized her description in a drawing
(see Fig. 14). She drew the partial positive and negative charges (see
Maggie’s sketch is on the right side of Fig. 14) and tagged the polar
and non-polar parts of the molecules.
In her sketches of the particle level she used both symbolic
representations (e.g. Lewis structures) and representations
of particles (bubbles) to represent her thoughts. During the
post-scaffold interview, Maggie again described the formation
of two phases (synthesis—nucleophilic substitution of
tert-butyl chloride). The following quotes are excerpts from
Maggie’s post-scaffold interview during which she activated
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Fig. 15 Maggie’s sense-making approach in the post-scaffold interview in
which she reflected about the formation of two phases.
submicroscopic features and described a submicroscopic pro-
perty (‘‘OH group is polar’’) as well as the formation of that
property (‘‘because we have a delta plus on the hydrogen atom and
a delta minus on the oxygen atom’’).
Furthermore, she described properties and activities of the
CC-bonds (‘‘usually non-polar’’; ‘‘cannot form hydrogen bonds’’) and
concluded by describing the non-existent interactions between the
entities and the resulting formation of two phases. Thus, she was
able explain the activities and properties that were missing in the
pre-scaffold interview. Maggie’s case is exemplary because it shows
the connection between the scaffold worksheet and her thinking
processes during the post-scaffold interview.
We observed various incidences of drawings or a description in
the scaffold sheet seeming to encourage students to make more
references to the submicroscopic level in the post-scaffold interview.
As the work-up procedures are not normally explained in the
laboratory report at the end of each synthesis (which Maggie’s case
demonstrates), we can assume that students’ shift towards the
submicroscopic level was related to students’ work with the scaffold.
With regard to the changes effected by students’ use of the
scaffold, students who described their reaction processes in
detail switched more frequently to the submicroscopic level
and of their own volition.
However, based on the exploratory and qualitative nature of the
study, further research is needed to determine if these positive
observations are replicable and how best to support those students
who filled out the scaffold worksheet insufficiently and thus did not
profit as much from the scaffold as other students.
Conclusions and implications
Successfully making sense of organic synthesis in the laboratory
requires the ability to explain observations using multiple mecha-
nistic features at the macroscopic and submicroscopic representa-
tional levels and to connect these levels in a meaningful way.
We consciously do not propose ‘‘one’’ correct approach or a
specific starting point to explain a chemical phenomenon in a
meaningful way. It is, however, important to be aware of the
coexistence and the role of the two representational levels to fully
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account for a chemical phenomenon. The order of use, i.e. whether
a submicroscopic explanation is inferred from a macroscopic
phenomenon or vice versa is secondary and depends on the context
and the question asked.
If a chemical phenomenon shows no obvious observations
(e.g. a colourless solution reacts with a colourless solution), it is
difficult to make sense of the observation. However, guiding
students to attend to macroscopic changes, even if they are
small or hardly visible is an essential skill in the inquiry
process. Relating observable changes to the underlying mole-
cular processes is as important as being aware, that a reaction
may take place even when there is nothing to observe.
If students argue and explain only at one of the two
representational levels and, for example, remain completely
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on the macroscopic level, they are missing the other half of the
story. The same issue arises when students neglect macroscopic
observations and only consider the submicroscopic level in
their explanations. Thus, students need to be encouraged to
consciously reflect on a chemical process macroscopically and
submicroscopically (Taber, 2013). They also have to be able to
connect both representational levels in a meaningful way
(Anderson, 1978; Johnstone, 1991; Gabel et al., 1992; Treagust
et al., 2003; Gilbert and Treagust, 2009a, 2009b; Krist et al.,
2018; Keiner and Graulich, 2020). These abilities are addressed
by the structure of the scaffold.
To reprise, the central goals of this study were as follows:
(1) Analyse to what extent students are able to activate
mechanistic features (at the macroscopic and submicroscopic
levels) during pre- and post-scaffold interviews.
(2) Characterize how students make sense of synthesis steps.
(3) Determine if there is a relationship between students’
sense-making approaches and their use of the scaffold.
Our analysis revealed that students use all mechanistic
features at both representational levels to make sense of
organic synthesis. In the pre- and post-scaffold interviews,
students were able to activate entities and properties at both
representational levels but used fewer activities and less orga-
nization. Analysing the use of these features in detail revealed
that the causal link between the features (particularly during
the pre-scaffold interview) was often missing and students’
explanations can be considered as static. This finding is in
accordance with previous research (Grove et al., 2012; Caspari
et al., 2018; Moreira et al., 2018; Keiner and Graulich, 2020) in
which students’ explanations tend to include initial starting
material and products but little description of the underlying
reaction. During the post-scaffold interview, after students had
completed two organic syntheses using the scaffold, we observed
a small increase in the activation of process-related mechanistic
features as students described activities more frequently.
Thus, we can assume that students’ work with the scaffold
encouraged them to reflect more deeply on the particle level of
their synthesis steps. However, further research is needed to
elucidate the effect of the scaffold using quantitative methods
and a larger sample.
Our analysis also revealed that three main sense-making
approaches characterize students’ explanations with regard to
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the transition between the macroscopic and submicroscopic
representational levels:
(1) Sense-making approach I (i.e. macroscopic–prompt–
macroscopic); (2) sense-making approach II (i.e. macroscopic–
prompt–submicroscopic); (3) sense-making approach III
(i.e. macroscopic–submicroscopic, without a prompt).
We observed that students who fully described their synthesis
steps in the scaffold exhibited an improvement in their sense-
making approach between the pre- and post-scaffold interviews:
they transitioned more often, without prompts, from the macro-
scopic to the submicroscopic representational level (sense-making
approach III). Although these observations are promising, it is
apparent from the scaffold worksheets and interview transcripts
that some students struggled to describe and visualize their
observations at the particle level, even when explicitly prompted
to think about the properties and activities of the entities while
working with the scaffold. In this study, students often referred to
the final product in their scaffold worksheet but did not explain
how to get there (e.g. when they described a property, they did not
mention how it is formed).
If a mental model of how particles interact is missing in
students’ reasoning processes, it is difficult for them to make a
connection between the macroscopic and submicroscopic
levels. Such mental models do not develop naturally in students
(Deratzou, 2006). Thus, it is important to provide students with
the opportunity to constantly reflect on and connect these
representational levels. The scaffold sought to elicit this ability
in students and it seems that reflective work with the scaffold
had a positive effect on students’ ability to transition between
the macroscopic and submicroscopic representational levels.
This aspect of encouraging students to first think about how
they can depict entities and chemical phenomena at the
individual representational levels and how to combine them
afterwards in a meaningful way has as well been illustrated by
the study from Thomas (2017). The worksheet used in this
study is to some extend similar to our scaffold and directed
students’ metacognition in an explicit way, i.e. to attend to the
separate nature of each of the representational levels and the
relationships between them.
Conscious reflection on the macroscopic and submicro-
scopic representational levels does not happen automatically
in the laboratory. This requires active engagement by students
in the process such as scaffolding. For example, students who
fully described their syntheses in the scaffold showed the most
positive changes in their approach.
The structure of the scaffold worksheet could be applied to all
occurring chemical processes where it is important that students’
observations are connected at the particle level and that students
are able to transition between representational levels. For
example, inorganic chemistry students could use the scaffold
while analysing an unknown compound (analytical chemistry);
or biology students could use the scaffold while testing various
fertilizers in relation to plant growth and visual changes. This type
of scaffolding can be smoothly integrated into existing teaching
practices to expand upon what students already do and to help
them connect their observations with the particle level.
This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2020
 View Article Online

Chemistry Education Research and Practice Paper

Limitations Table 4 Statistical analysis of the sense-making approaches (SMA) from

the pre- to the post-interview. **p o 0.01
The conclusions drawn here should be considered with caution
t-Value Cohen’s d 95% CI
given some of the inherent limitations of this study. First, this
was a qualitative study with volunteering students from a class SMA I 0.58 0.11 [ 0.70; 0.48]
SMA II 0.93 0.26 [ 0.85; 0.34]
of student teachers in an organic chemistry laboratory course. SMA III 2.92** 0.88 [0.25; 1.49]
This student population may be driven by different motivations
and interests with regard to chemistry than students majoring
in chemistry. The implication drawn from this qualitative effect. Due to the limited number of students in this study, it
analysis are thus limited to this group. Second, primarily should be mentioned, that the confidence interval is very large and
qualitative methods were used to describe the quality of students’ statistical statements are only possible to a limited extent.
explanations in the pre- and post-scaffold interviews. The quanti- Furthermore, the sense-making approaches were explored
tative analysis should be interpreted with caution, as the sample for statistical significance using a paired-sample t-test. Table 4
is too small for a conclusive statistical statement. Due to the small shows the comparison of the sense-making approaches from
number of students in the cohort, the confidence interval is large. the pre- to the post-interview. The data show that students used
Published on 02 October 2020. Downloaded on 10/20/2020 9:45:58 PM.

Nevertheless, the large effect size for the increase of sense-making
approach III indicates that the work with the scaffold seems to
influence students’ reasoning. In order to generalize the results
and to investigate whether this effect is sustainable or holds true
for larger classes, further studies are necessary.
Third, students were asked to explain their synthesis in an
individual interview setting that was quite different from the
environment in the laboratory. Students appeared to feel comforta-
ble with the research team and the interview setting, which may have
prompted them to pay closer attention to the work with the scaffold
than they would have paid in a laboratory situation.
Conflicts of interest
sense-making approach III significantly (p = 0.008) more often
than sense-making approaches I or II. This increase is coupled
with a large effect size (Cohen’s d = 0.88). Changes in sense-
making approach I and II are not statistically significant and
show no effect size.
Appendix 2. Students’ evaluation of
the scaffold
Fig. 16 shows the percentages achieved by students in the scaffold
and the points achieved in the separate categories—preparatory
steps, main reaction step, and work-up procedures. As not every

There is no conflict of interest to declare.

Appendix 1. Statistical analysis

of the comparison of the pre- and
post-interview data
The increase of the activated mechanistic features on the
respective representational level was explored for statistical
significance using a paired-sample t-test. The results are presented
in Table 3. Students activated significantly more macroscopic
entities and submicroscopic activities. The increase of the submi-
croscopic activity is coupled with a large effect size (Cohen’s
d = 0.81), whereas the macroscopic entity (Cohen’s d = 0.37) and
the submicroscopic organization (Cohen’s d = 0.41) show a small

Table 3 Statistical analysis of the activated features (E = entity; P =

property; O = organization; A = activity; M = macroscopic; S = submicro-
scopic) from the pre- to the post-interview. *p o 0.05; ***p o 0.001

t-Value Cohen’s d 95% CI

EM 2.35* 0.37 [ 0.23; 0.97]
PM 0.66 0.14 [ 0.73; 0.45]
Fig. 16 Evaluation of students’ descriptions in the scaffold worksheet
OM 0.14 0.03 [ 0.56; 0.62]
AM 0.48 0.12 [ 0.47; 0.71] divided into the three main categories (preparatory steps, reaction steps,
ES 0.20 0.05 [ 0.54; 0.64] work-up procedure), their achieved points (2 = fully described; 1 = partially
PS 1.21 0.24 [ 0.35; 0.84] described; 0 = insufficiently described) in each of these categories, and the
OS 1.34 0.41 [ 0.19; 0.99] resulting overall percentage. The colours highlight the groups as follows:
AS 4.61*** 0.81 [0.19; 1.42] green = fully; yellow = partially; red = insufficiently.

This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2020 Chem. Educ. Res. Pract.

Paper
synthesis has a preparatory step, some fields are left blank. The
last column indicates the overall percentage of available points
attained.
Acknowledgements
This publication represents part of the first author’s doctoral
(Dr rer. nat.) thesis at the Faculty of Biology and Chemistry,
Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Germany. We thank all students
who participated in the study. We also thank the Graulich
research group for fruitful discussions about the research and
Professor Richard Göttlich for his support.
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