Mary O'Donnell
B.S. Nazareth College
Ph.D. candidate
cognate: analytical chemistry
joined Bretz group: Nov. 2006
expected graduation: May 2011
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Investigating
Children's Ideas about Chemicals
Dissertation: My primary focus for
this project is to explore children's
everyday knowledge of chemicals. My research questions include: (1)
What do children know about chemicals? (2) How do children categorize
chemicals encountered in their everyday lives? and (3) In what ways do
children use their knowledge of chemicals in their everyday lives?
Identifying children's knowledge of chemicals and how this knowledge is
used prior to instruction will be beneficial to future changes in
curriculum design that are better able to address the information
students bring with them to an instructional setting.
Cognate Project: This project
involves learning in the laboratory, more
specifically in the 2nd semester general chemistry lab course for
chemistry majors (Qualitative Analysis). My research question is: How
do second semester general chemistry students describe their learning
in an analytical laboratory course? More specifically, this research
will address how students characterize what they learn in the lab with
respect to the three types of laboratory experiments: classical,
discovery, and instrumental. The results of this study will provide the
instructor of the course with insights useful for improving the design
and structure of the course. This information will benefit curriculum
designers who wish to directly connect what students do in the lab with
how students view learning in the lab.
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