About This Project

My study investigates how to improve chemistry education using grounded and embodied learning research. My study uses an experimental design to explore how active learning and sensorimotor experiences influence students' chemical reasoning. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses will examine the components and the structural organization of students' reasoning. We hypothesize sensorimotor experiences improve students' reasoning compared to traditional lecture-style instruction.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

Careers in chemistry can be rewarding and are in high demand, yet introductory undergraduate chemistry is a challenging and gatekeeping subject for many.

I was a high school chemistry teacher and now an educational psychologist, trained to study the cognitive mechanisms that explain how people learn. I am applying my professional training to help professors better understand how students learn chemistry concepts, making education more accessible. Chemistry education researchers are learning that students' prior knowledge and experiences are important in understanding new chemistry ideas.1

In this study, I aim to test the hypothesis that a lesson with a sensorimotor experience helps organize students' ideas better than lecture-based instruction, resulting in higher quality and more connected reasoning. This is an established idea among grounded and embodied learning researchers in areas like mathematics education, but not yet in chemistry.

What is the significance of this project?

Some chemistry education researchers are turning to grounded and embodied learning (GEL) theories to inform instruction.2,3 GEL theories argue that our minds are deeply integrated with our bodies. While this might sound intuitive, for many years, dominant cognitive theories were built on models that separated the thoughts of the mind from the sensations of the body. GEL theorists argue that instruction making the mind-body connection results in deeper and more connected understandings of the targeted ideas. When possible, multisensorial instruction, allowing students to experience the targeted idea, works best. To my knowledge, no research has explored the effect an embodied learning intervention has on the structure of students’ chemistry reasoning.

Through my dissertation study, I seek to understand how a sensorimotor experience will affect the structure of students’ chemistry reasoning.

What are the goals of the project?

I wish to understand how a multisensory experience can influence students' reasoning about chemistry. Previous research suggests these lessons help students generate more ideas with more connections compared to lectures that describe the same idea. However, to my knowledge, this hypothesis has not yet been tested in college chemistry.

In this study, students will either participate in a lesson that involves a sensorimotor experience highlighting a fundamental mechanism that explains a phenomenon or receive instruction that involves only a particle-level explanation of the same subject. This randomized experiment will evaluate the quality and connectedness of students' ability to use particle models to explain observable phenomena at two time points (immediately after, and 3 weeks after instruction).

By submitting parts of this work for consideration at the 2026 ISLS and BCCE meetings, I plan to share findings with educational researchers and practitioners.