Peer instruction in chemistry education: Assessment of students’ learning strategies, conceptual learning and problem solving

Chemistry courses are required for many different STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) disciplines. Chemistry educators in these fields have realized that most students are not able to learn sufficient chemistry through conventional instruction and complete courses with similar misconceptions and preconceptions because the students do not generally make links between different concepts (e.g., acids and bases, chemical bonding, enthalpy and enthalpy change, energy and its change, heat and temperature, heat and work, etc.) (Burrows & Mooring, 2015; Cartrette & Mayo, 2011; Nagel & Lindsey, 2015; Nilsson & Niedderer, 2014).

Students also have great difficulty in finding correct results for quantitative/qualitative chemistry problems (Avramiotis & Tsaparlis, 2013; Broman & Parchamnn, 2014). Therefore student-centered instructional approaches are needed to overcome this drawback of conventional instruction and to provide a better comprehension in chemistry (Gosser, Kampmeier, & Varma-Nelson, 2010; Lewis & Lewis, 2005; Liaw, Chiu, & Chou, 2014). One of the instructional approaches used is peer instruction.

Mazur and Watkins (2010) defined peer instruction as “an interactive teaching technique that promotes classroom interaction to engage students and address difficult aspects of the material” (p. 39). Peer instruction (PI) is mainly based on the constructivist approach, which is an active process based on student-centered learning in which learners construct their own meaning of knowledge instead of knowledge transfer from instructors (Kwan & Wong, 2015). Peer instruction was originally used to teach fundamental physics concepts using multiple-choice test items in a large-enrollment introductory undergraduate physics course (Mazur, 1997). PI consists of three stages, which are the set up stage, the response stage and the solution/discussion stage of the concept tests/problems (Turpen & Finkelstein, 2009).

Peer instruction provides many advantages for both students and instructors. Some of these benefits are as follows: (a) PI enhances the engagement and comprehension of the students regardless of their background knowledge (Crouch & Mazur, 2001; Lasry, Mazur, & Watkins, 2008); (b) PI increases peers interaction, allows peers to challenge each other with debates, and provides a process of reasoning during class discussions (Nicol & Boyle, 2003; Perez et al., 2010; Smith et al., 2009); (c) PI improves students’ ability to solve problems and gain new insights as a consequence of the thinking process (Gok, 2015); (d) PI reduces students’ number who drops out of the course (Gok, 2012a) and (e) PI diminishes the gender gap in students’ conceptual learning (Gok, 2014, Lorenzo, Crouch, & Mazur, 2006; Miller, et al., 2014).

The literature does not include sufficient studies on peer instruction in chemistry classroom apart from the research of Cavalli, Hamerton, & Lygo-Baker, (2015); McCreary, Golde, & Koeske (2006); Parkinson (2009) and Schell & Mazur (2015). The purpose of this research was to investigate whether peer instruction affected students’ conceptual learning, problem solving performance, and learning strategies. The research questions examined were:

Is peer instruction effective on students’ conceptual learning?
Is peer instruction effective on students’ learning strategies?
Is peer instruction effective on students’ problem solving performance?
Does peer instruction change students’ affective and cognitive ideas regarding the course?