Linking Core Concepts and Competencies in General Chemistry via Gowin’s Theory of Learning and Vee Heuristic

The content in introductory science courses has often been criticized as “miles wide and inches deep”. In general chemistry, several revisions have focused on framing around a set of core or anchoring concepts, and we recently adapted the anchoring concepts content map (ACCM) of the American Chemical Society (ACS) to develop an anchoring concept-based curriculum for our general chemistry courses. In this article, we describe efforts to connect this curriculum with laboratory learning using Gowin’s theory of learning and the associated knowledge Vee heuristic. Within this framework, the laboratories themselves become events connecting the conceptual and methodological domains, with elements in the heuristic representing key epistemological components that are central to the generation of new knowledge and/or meaning. In carrying out this approach, our general chemistry course was redesigned into a set of three-week modules, each centered around a core learning objective and anchoring concept. In each module, students conducted 2 weeks of laboratory experiments closely connected to the module theme. In the third week, oral presentations were given in teams where, modeled on the format of a scientific article, one team each was assigned to present on: 1) Introduction and Background, 2) Methods and Materials, 3) Results, and 4) Discussion. These assignments rotated over the semester, and the discussion group for each module was tasked with writing a detailed (3–5 page) reflective written discussion, with opportunity given for revision. This article describes the initial implementations and outcomes of this approach in a majors general chemistry sequence.