Conceptual elaboration in organic chemistry from the perspective of Peircean semiotics

This study focuses on the contributions that the cross linking of Cognitive Sciences with Peircean Semiotics could bring for understanding students’ difficulties in the representation processes in Organic Chemistry. The occurrence of perception processes, interpretation and building representations in Organic Chemistry teaching were identified and analyzed. Our results showed that Peircean Semiotics has positively contributed to the understanding of the conceptual elaboration processes in Organic Chemistry, especially regarding language acquisition. To summarise, we concluded that the difficulties involved in Organic Chemistry didactics are associated essentially with representational aspects, while the conceptual ones play a secondary role. These factors could be perceived even for undergraduate students, where it is supposed to be less relevant.

Chemistry teaching; Semiotics; Organic chemistry; Knowledge representation; Language acquisition