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HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article

Front. Educ.
Sec. STEM Education
Volume 9 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2024.1412417
This article is part of the Research Topic Organic Chemistry Education Research into Practice View all 10 articles

Teaching Abductive Reasoning for Use as a Problem-Solving Tool in Organic Chemistry and Beyond

Provisionally accepted
Jay W. Wackerly Jay W. Wackerly 1*Michael T. Wentzel Michael T. Wentzel 2Sarah K. Zingales Sarah K. Zingales 3
  • 1 Central College, Pella, United States
  • 2 Augsburg University, Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States
  • 3 University of Saint Joseph, West Hartford, Connecticut, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The second-year undergraduate Organic Chemistry course sequence is often cited as one of the most, if not the most, challenging for students in the US. Thus, a persistent question remains: What is it about Organic Chemistry that makes the course so difficult for students? Herein, we put forward the hypothesis that a new mode of thinking and problem solving is expected of the students; these skills have not yet been developed in their prior scientific coursework and are often not deliberately taught in Organic Chemistry. This form of reasoning and problem solving, known as abductive reasoning, is highlighted for its connection to medical diagnosis and scientific thinking.We provide examples to showcase how instructors could explicitly foreground the reasoning process in their classroom. Ultimately, we argue that teaching how to reason using abduction may benefit students in both the short term (in the course) and the long term (in their careers as scientists and medical practitioners).

    Keywords: abduction, abductive reasoning, Organic Chemistry, diagnosis, metacognition, Problem Solving, Pre-health education

    Received: 04 Apr 2024; Accepted: 05 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Wackerly, Wentzel and Zingales. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Jay W. Wackerly, Central College, Pella, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.