Category: science teaching

science pedagogy, didactics, methodology of teaching

She'd never thought about whether ionic bonding is the same thing as chemical bonding

Keith S. Taber

Amy was a participant in the Understanding Science Project. When I talked to her near the start of her GCSE 'triple science' course in Y10 she told me that ionic bonding was "atoms which have either lost or gained electrons so they are either positively or negatively charged" and that chemical bonding was "like in a compound, where two or more elements are joined together", but she seemed unsure how the two concepts were related.

I followed up on Amy's use of the term 'compound' to explore how she understood the term:

How would you define a compound?

Erm …Something which has erm two or more elements chemically bonded.

… So you give me an example of that, compound?

Erm, sodium oxide.

Sodium oxide, okay, so there are two or more elements chemically bonded in sodium oxide are there?

Uh hm

And what would those two or more elements be?

Sodium and oxygen.

Okay. Erm, so when we say sodium oxide is chemically bonded, what we are saying there is?

[pause, c 2s]

Erm – a sodium atom has been bonded with a oxygen atom to form erm a new substance.

So Amy's example of a compound was sodium oxide, which would normally be considered essentially an ionic compound, that is a compound with ionic bonding. So this gave me an opportunity to test out whether Amy saw the bonding in sodium chloride and sodium oxide as similar.


Okay, so that was chemical bonding,

Mm.

and that occurs with compounds?

Yeah.

And what did you say about ionic bonding?

Erm, it's the outer electrons they are transferred from one element to another.

Now what does that occur in? You gave me one example, didn't you?

Uh huh

Sodium chloride?

Yeah
…

Erm. Would sodium chloride be er an element?

[pause, c.2s]

Sodium chloride, no.

No?

It would be a compound.

You think that would be a compound?

Yeah.

And a compound is two or more elements joined together by chemical bonding?

Yeah.

So Amy had told me that sodium chloride, which had ionic bonding, was (like sodium oxide) a compound, and she had already told me that a compound comprised of "two or more elements chemically bonded", so it should be follow that sodium chloride (which had ionic bonding) had chemical bonding.

Do you think sodium chloride has chemical bonding?

Er – I think so

And it also has ionic bonding, or is that the same thing?

Erm,

[pause, c.2s]

I dunno, I've never thought about it that way, erm,

[pause c.3s]

I'm not sure, erm

[pause, c.2s]

I dunno, it might be.

Clearly, whatever Amy had been taught (and interviewing students reveals they often only recall partial and distorted versions of what was presented in class) she had learnt

  • (1) that ionic bonding was transfer of electrons (an alternative conception) as in the example of sodium transferring an electron to chlorine; and that
  • (2) a compounds was where two or more elements chemically bonded together, and an example was sodium oxide where the elements sodium and oxygen were chemical bonded.

Yet these two pieces of learning seemed to have been acquired as isolated ideas without any attempt to link them. Initially Amy seemed to feel ionic bonding and chemical bonding were quite separate concepts.

When taken through an argument that led to her telling me that sodium chloride, that she thought had ionic bonding, was a compound, which therefore had chemical bonding, there should have been a logical imperative to see that ionic bonding was chemical bonding (actually, a kind of chemical bonding – as the logic did not imply that chemical bonding was necessarily ionic bonding). Despite the implied syllogism:

  • sodium chloride has ionic bonding
  • sodium chloride is a compound
  • compounds have elements chemically bonded together
  • therefore ionic bonding …

Amy was unsure what to deduce, presumably because she had seen the two concepts of ionic bonding and chemical bonding as discrete notions and had had given no thought to a possible relationship between them. However explicit teaching had been on this point, it is very likely that the teacher had expected students to appreciate that ionic bonding was a type of chemical bonding – but Amy had not integrated these ideas into a connected conceptual structure (i.e., there was a learning bug that could be called a fragmentation learning impediment).

Ionic bonding – compared with chemical bonding

Keith S. Taber

Amy was a participant in the Understanding Science Project. The first time I talked to Amy, near the start of her GCSE 'triple science' course in Y10 she told me that "in normal chemistry (i.e., the chemistry part of 'double science', as opposed to the optional additional chemistry lesson as part of 'triple science' that Amy also attended) we're doing about ionic bonding" which she understood in terms of "atoms which have either lost or gained electrons so they are either positively or negatively charged" because "in ionic bonding it's the electrons that are transferred".

When asked other examples of ionic bonding apart from sodium and chlorine Amy told me "That's the one I did".

To a teacher it seems inherently obvious that ionic bonding is type of bonding – in much the way that a snare drum is a kind of drum or a conscientious student is a type of student. However, this may not always be obvious to students (even the conscientious ones).

When I asked Amy about bonding she referred to things being chemically bonded, and when I asked if ionic bonding was the same as chemical bonding, she was not sure how these concepts were related:

So what exactly is bonding?

Erm, where er one thing is joined on to another thing, and it can be chemically bonded or, yeah {laughs}

So we can talk about chemical bonding?

Mm.

Are there other types of bonding then?

Erm, there must be, if there's chemical bonding, I'm not sure, erm

[pause, c.5s]

But we talk about chemical bonding,

Mm.

and we talk about ionic bonding. So is ionic bonding the same thing as chemical bonding or is there a difference?

Erm, in, well in chemical bonding, erm like in a compound, where erm – two or more elements are joined together, that's an example of chemical bonding, but in – erm – ionic bonding it's the erm electrons that are transferred. [pause, c.2s] I think.

It seems Amy had been taught about chemical bonding and had learn about this as "a compound, where two or more elements are joined together", and she had been taught about ionic bonding and had learnt that this was where "the electrons are transferred".

Ionic bonding is not (and need not be associated with) electron transfer. It is not possible form talking to Amy to now exactly what her teacher told her – clearly she could have misunderstood or forgotten material form class. It is possible that it was made clear that ionic bonding was one type of chemical bonding, but Amy either missed that point or did not now recall it. It is also possible is was not made explicit but was assumed to be obvious (especially if ionic bonding had been presented as part of a sequence on chemical bonding. Sadly, what is obvious to teachers is not always obvious to learners, and indeed I've seen in my interviews that students are not always clear when one topic has finished and another has started. There is no sense here that I wish to criticise the teacher (who for all I know gave an exemplary presentation of the chemical bonding), but would simply suggest that when teaching one can never assume what should be obvious is obvious and that it is probably difficult to be too explicit about key ideas, or to reiterate them too often!

So at this point it seemed Amy only knew one example of ionic bonding, sodium chloride, and did not associate this with compounds which had chemical bonding. This could be considered a fragmentation learning impediment – a failure to make a link that was expected from the teaching. I went on to ask her for an example of a compound, and a she told me about sodium oxide I thought this was an opportunity to probe at the association between ionic boding and chemical bonding a little more.

Ionic bonding – where the electron's transferred to complete the outer shell

Keith S. Taber

Amy was a participant in the Understanding Science Project. The first time I talked to Amy, near the start of her GCSE 'triple science' course in Y10 she told me that "in normal chemistry (i.e., the chemistry part of 'double science', as opposed to the optional additional chemistry lesson as part of 'triple science' that Amy also attended) we're doing about ionic bonding" which was "atoms which have either lost or gained electrons so they are either positively or negatively charged" and

"how the outer electron's transferred…to complete the outer shell of the erm chlorine, thing, ion…and the sodium atom loses erm, one electron is it, yeah one electron, erm, which the chlorine atom gains, and that yeah that completes its outer shell and makes the sodium positively charged and the chlorine negatively charged".

Amy told me that "in ionic bonding it's the electrons that are transferred, I think."

So Amy had acquired a common alternative conception, i.e. that ionic bonding involved electron transfer, and that this occurs to atoms to complete their electron shells.

Ionic bonding refers to the forces between ions that hold the structure of an ionic substance together, rather than a mechanism by which such ions might hypothetically be formed – yet often learners come away form learning about ionic bonding identifying it with a process of electron transfer between atoms instead of interactions between ions which can be used to explain the properties of ionic substances.

Moreover, the hypothetical electron transfer is a fiction. In the case of NaCl such an electron transfer between isolated Na and Cl atoms would be energetically unfavourable, even if reactants containing discrete atoms were available (which is unrealistic).

Whether students are taught that ionic bonding is electron transfer is a moot point, but often introductory teaching of the topic focuses not on the nature of the bonding, but on presenting a (flawed) teaching model of how the ions in the ionic structure could form by electron transfer between atoms. As this mechanism is non-viable, and so not an authentic scientific account, it may seem odd that teachers commonly offer it.

One explanation may simply be custom or tradition has made this an insidious alternative conception. Science teachers and textbooks have 'always' offered the image of electron transfer as representing ionic bonding. So, this is what new teachers had themselves been taught at school, is what they often see in textbooks, and so what they learn to teach.

Another possible explanation is in terms of what what is known as the atomic ontology. This is the idea that the starting pint for thinking about chemistry at the submicroscopic level is atoms. Atoms do not need to be explained (as if in nature matter always starts as atoms – which is not the case) and other entities such as ions and molecules do need to be explained in terms of atoms. So, the atomic ontology is a kind of misleading alternative conceptual framework for thinking about chemistry at the submicroscopic level.

Current only slows down at the resistor

Current only slows down at the resistor – by analogy with water flow 

Keith S. Taber

Students commonly think that resistance in a circuit has local effects, and in part that is because forming a mental model of what is going on in circuits is very difficult. Often models and analogies can be useful. However when an analogy is used in teaching there is also the potential for it to mislead.

Amy was a participant in the Understanding Science Project. Amy (when in Y10) told me she had been taught to use a water flow analogy for electric current. However, because her visualisation of what happens in water circuits was incorrect, she used the analogy to inform an alternative conception about circuits:

Do you have any kind of imagined sort of idea, any little mental models, about what (the flow of electricity round the circuit) might look like? Do you have a way of imagining that?

Erm, yeah, we've been taught the water tank and pipe running round it. … just imagine the water like flowing through a pipe, and obviously like, if the pipe becomes smaller a one point, erm, the water flow has to slow down, and that's meant to represent the resistance of something.

So, so if I had my water, er, tank and I had a series of pipes, they'd be water flowing through the pipes, and if I had a narrower pipe at one point, what happens then?

The water would have to slow down.

So would it slow down just as it goes through the narrow pipe, or would it slow down all the way round?

Erm – just through that part.

(Amy does not appreciate the implications of conservation of mass {that is, the continuity principle} here – at steady state there cannot be a greater mass flow at different points in the circuit).

…

And so how do you imagine that's got to do with resistance, how does that help you understand resistance?

…well resistance, it slows the current down, but then erm, once it passes a resistor or something it, the current is free to flow through the wire again

Analogies can be very useful teaching tools, but when using them it is important to check that the students already understand the features of the analogue that are meant to be helpful. It is also important to ensure that they understand which features are meant to be mapped onto the target system they are learning about, and which are not relevant.

Analogies are only useful when the learner has a good understand of the analogue. In this case, as Amy did not appreciate that the water flow throughout the system would be limited by the constriction, she could not use that as a useful analogy for why a resistor influences current flow at all points in a series circuit. This is an example of where a teaching model meant to support learning, which actually misleads the learner. That is, for Amy, with her flawed understanding of fluid flow, the teaching model acted as a pedagogic learning impediment – a type of grounded learning impediment.

Covalent bonding is when atoms share electrons to combine into one whole thing

Keith S. Taber

Umar was a participant in the Understanding Chemical Bonding project. When I spoke to him in the first term of his advanced level chemistry course he identified figure 2 (below) as representing a hydrogen molecule, with covalent bonding.

UCB Figure 2 (for interview-about-instances technique)

Can you tell me what you think that's meant to represent?

Er, two hy-, a hydrogen molecule, 'cause it's like they've got one electron, in the only one shell, and they're joined together, a covalent bonding, and they're sharing it.

So what is a covalent bond exactly?

When they share electrons.

When you share electrons?

Yeah.

So when Umar thought of covalent bonding he seemed to primarily associate this with the notion of 'sharing' of electrons. The idea that atoms can 'share' anything could be considered an example of anthropomorphism, but this is a common metaphor that is widely used in discussing bonding.

The 'sharing' notion is however little more than a descriptive label, and has limited explanatory power. Acceptable explanations of the bond would draw upon scientific concepts, such as electrical forces, or atomic orbital overlaps allowing the formation of lower energy molecular orbitals. I probed Umar to see how he understood the nature of the covalent bond.

Or do you think they're stuck together?

I think they're quite strong together, covalent is quite a strong bond.

So that will hold them together will it?

Yeah.

Umar certainly saw the bond as a strong linkage of some kind, but so far my questions had not revealed how he understood the bond to hold the molecule together.

Well how does it do that?

It's like, they're joined together, 'cause first of all they just had two atoms with one electron each, and now they're sharing two electrons between them. So it's quite strong.

Oh, why's that?

Because the the the actual, when they share them they're like combined into like one sort of whole thing, instead of two separate atoms.

Right, so the, so the bond, which is the sharing of two electrons, that holds them together,

Yeah.

to make one thing, which we've called a molecule.

Yeah.

So at this point in Umar's course he seemed to conceptualise the covalent bonding as electron sharing and saw the action of sharing to inherently hold the molecule together, and seemed to be satisfied with that as an explanation for the bond. This discussion took place early in the interview, before we then discussed a whole range of other images. Near the very end of the interview I returned to ask about figure 2 again (see Sharing the same shell and electron makes them more joined together like one)*.

An element needs a certain number of electrons

An element needs a certain amount of electrons in the outer shell

Keith S. Taber

Bert was a participant in the Understanding Science project. In Y10 Bert was talking about how he had been studying electrolysis in class. Bill had described electrolysis as "where different elements are, are taken out from a compound", but it transpired that Bert thought that "a compound is just a lot of different elements put together"*. He seemed to have a tentative understanding that electrolysis could only be used to separate elements in some compounds.

if they're positive and negative then they would be able to be separated into different ones.

So some things are, some things aren't?

Yeah, it matters how many electrons that they have.

Ah. [pause, c.3s] So have you got any examples of things that you know would definitely be positive and negative?

Well I could tell you what happens.

Yeah, go on then.

Well erm, well if a, if an element gives away, electrons, then it becomes positive. But if it gains, then it becomes negative. Because the electrons are negative, so if they gain more, they just go a bit negative.

Yeah. So why would an element give away or gain some electrons? Why would it do that?

Because erm, it needs a certain amount of electrons in the outer shell. It matters on what part of the periodic table they are.

Okay, let me be really awkward. Why does it need a certain number of electrons in the outer shell?

[Pause, c.2 s]

Erm, well, I don't know. It just – 

So Bert thought that an element "needs a certain amount of electrons in the outer shell" depending upon it's position in the periodic table, but he did not seem to recall having been given any reason why this was. The use of the term 'needs' is an example of anthropomorphism, which is commonly used by students talking about atoms and molecules. Often this derives from language used by teachers to help humanise the science, and provide a way for students to make sense of the abstract ideas. If Bert comes to feel this is a sufficient explanation, then talk of what an element needs can come to stand in place of learning a more scientifically acceptable explanation, and so can act as a grounded learning impediment.

References to atoms needing a certain number of electrons is often used as an explanatory principle (the full shells explanatory principle) considered to explain why bonding occurs, why reactions occur and so forth.

Bert's final comment in the short extract above seems to reflect a sense of 'well that's just the way the world is'. It is inevitable that if we keep asking someone a sequence of 'well, why is that' question when they tell us about their understanding of the world, they eventually reach the limits of their understanding. (This tendency has been labelled 'the explanatory gestalt of essence'.) Ultimately, even science has to accept the possibility that eventually we reach answers and can not longer explain further – that's just the way the world is. Research suggests that some students seem to reach the 'it's just natural' or 'well that's just the way it is' point when teachers might hope they would be looking for further levels of explanation. This may link to when phenomena fit well with the learner's intuitive understanding of the world, or tacit knowledge.

Bert's reference to an element needing a certain amount of electrons in the outer shell also seems to confuse description at two different levels: he explicitly refer to substance (element), when he seems to mean a quanticle (atom). Element refers to the substance, at the macroscopic level of materials that can be handled in the laboratory, whilst an atom of the element (which might better be considered to gain or lose electrons) is part of the theoretical model of matter at a submicroscopic level, used by chemists as a basis for explaining much macroscopic, observed behaviour of samples of substances.


Electrical resistance depends upon density

Keith S. Taber

Amy was a participant in the Understanding Science project.

Amy (Y10) suggested that a circuit was "a thing containing wires and components which electricity can pass through…it has to contain a battery as well". She thought that electricity could pass through "most things".

For Amy "resistance is anything which kind of provides a barrier that, which the current has to pass through, slowing down the current in a circuit", and she thought about this in terms of the analogy with water in pipes: "we've been taught the water tank and pipe running round it… just imagine the water like flowing through a pipe, and obviously like, if the pipe becomes smaller at one point, erm, the water flow has to slow down, and that's meant to represent the resistance of something".

So for Amy, charge flow was impeded by physical barriers effectively blocking its way. She made the logical association with the density of a material, on the basis that a material with densely packed particles would have limited space for the charge to flow:

So electricity would "not very easily" pass through a wooden bench "because wood is quite a dense material and the particles in it are quite closely bonded".

In air, however, the particles were "not as dense as a solid". When asked if that meant that electricity can pass through air quite easily, Amy replied: "yeah, I think so".

Amy's connection between the density of particles and the ease with which charge could flow is a logical one, but unfortunately involves a misunderstanding of how charge flows through materials, i.e., from a canonical scientific perspective, thinking about the charge flowing through gaps between particles is unhelpful here. (So this can be considered an alternative conception.) This seems to be a creative associative learning impediment, where prior learning (here, the spacing of quanticles in different materials) is applied, but in a context beyond its range of application.


A dusty analogy – a visual demonstration of ionisation in a mass spectrometer

Keith S. Taber

Amy was a participant in the Understanding Science project. She was interviewed when she had just started her 'A level' (i.e., college) chemistry, and one of the topics that the course had started with was mass spectrometry. She gave me a very detailed account of what she had been taught, despite both casting doubt on the logic of parts of the account, and of the accuracy of her own recollection (see Amy's account of mass spectrometry *). One of the unconvincing aspects of the new topic seemed to be the way positive ions were produced by bombarding atoms with (negative) electrons – although she had clearly picked up the point.

She reported that her teacher had demonstrated this point with an analogy. She told me that the teacher was using a lot of analogies, and she seemed to find them a little silly, implying that this analogy was not helpful. This particular example involved a board duster and two matchboxes. One matchbox sat on the duster, and was knocked off by the other matchbox being projected at it.

I thought this was quite interesting, as Amy did think the formation of positive ions was counter-intuitive, but had remembered that this is what happened, and seemed to both remember and understand the use of the analogy – even though she was somewhat dismissive of it. I didn't get the chance to explore the issue at the time, but wondered if this was an example of a student maybe not appreciating the role of models and analogies (and simulation) in science itself, and so feeling that using such a device in teaching science was a little 'naff'. 

Amy's explanation of the stupid-sounding bit

Amy was dismissive of the teacher's analogical teaching model, even though she seemed to have remembered what he was illustrating:

I mean there was a couple of bits there that you didn't seem too sure about like, like er you know you sort of, you seemed to almost disown the fact that this electron gun is going to make these things into positive ions, you didn't seem very convinced by that?

Erm – I dunno if it's that I'm not convinced it just sounds weird, because it's like erm (pause, c.2s) I dunno, well it's like it's not something which you can see,

No.

and it's like, I dunno, he did this sort of example using a duster and two matchboxes, and, which wasn't very good, so.(Amy was laughing at this point)

Tell me about that then, how does that work? You see I know a bit about this, I don't know about the duster and the matchboxes.

Like no disrespect to our teacher but he uses these analogies, a duster being an atom with matchboxes being the electrons and something, and them being knocked off, because, yeah.

So he threw a matchbox at a duster that had a matchbox and he knocked the matchbox off the duster?

Pretty much.

See, it works for me,

(Amy laughs)

and you've remembered it?

Well, yeah, but – yeah.

…

Erm, So you've got this neutral atom, and you're firing negative electrons at it?

Yeah.

Now if you say that to somebody who doesn't know anything about what's going to happen, what do you think might happen if you fire negative electrons at a neutral atom?, what might you get?

A negative ion.

That's what you'd expect I think, isn't it, … well obviously you are firing negative things at it, so you will get negative. But in fact that's not what seems to happen. So he was trying to explain to you why firing negative things, at something neutral, you might end up with something positive. 'cause that's not obvious and logical, is it?

Yeah.

So if you throw a matchbox at a duster that contains a matchbox, you might knock the match box off?

Yeah (Amy laughs).

There is clearly a 'cultural' difference here, between the interviewer (a science teacher by background) and the interviewee (the learner), in that the interviewer 'got' the use of the demonstration as a pretty neat physical analogy, whereas the student clearly was dismissive. In this case Amy's lack of engagement with the modelling process did not seem to limit her learning, but her attitude demonstrated a lack of awareness of the status and roles of models in science (and in learning science) which has potential to act as a deficiency learning impediment if she cannot see how teaching models and analogies can help form mental models of scientific systems.