Systemic assessment questions for systems thinking development and evaluation in organic chemistry domain: a review of applications and future prospectives

Abstract

should develop. Therefore, the value of systems thinking in chemistry education is increasingly recognized through developing efficient evaluation and/or instructional tools. This review investigated how the systems thinking skills were developed and evaluated in organic chemistry classes with the application of systemic approach to teaching and learning, SATL, and more precisely systemic assessment questions, SAQs. The empirical peer-reviewed articles indexed in SCOPUS database were analyzed. In order to analyze and compare included studies, four descriptors were formulated, and qualitative content analysis approach was further used. The results indicated that analyzed studies used DSRP (distinctions, systems, relations, perspectives) model in order to develop scoring rubric for assessing students’ systems thinking skills after solving SAQs. SAQs were found to be efficient assessment tools with acceptable psychometric properties such as good validity and reliability. In the newest studies, SAQs were characterized as suitable instructional tools for enhancing students’ systems thinking skills. The analyzed studies included additional factors that could be related to the construct of systems thinking, such as meaningful understanding of chemistry concepts and/or students’ gender. At the end, the areas that need further investigation or improvement were highlighted. [African Journal of Chemical Education—AJCE 13(4), December 2023]