Unpacking representations

Representations are vital for communicating information about the structure and function of chemical entities. How a teacher presents and unpacks a representation influences how a chemistry learner understands it. A study explored the effect of altering the order in which you present representations on the ways that learners unpack their features. They used examples of chemical formulas, Lewis dot structures, ball-and-stick and space filling models. The order the researchers shared the different representations and the newly explicit features influenced what the learners considered and how they approached the task. Read this article’s teaching tips and use them in your classroom when covering shapes of molecules, organic compounds and intermolecular forces.