Dificultades en el Aprendizaje del Concepto Estequiometría en estudiantes de Licenciatura en Ciencias Naturales y Educación Ambiental de la Universidad Surcolombiana de Neiva, Huila

Resumo

The present research has as object of study the identification of difficulties about the stoichiometry concept in first semester students of the General Chemistry course corresponding to the academic period 2021-2 of the Natural Sciences and Environmental Education Degree of the Universidad Surcolombiana. The qualitative methodological design used involved the use of four instruments: a questionnaire to establish the conceptual starting point of the group of 8 participating students, an interview directed to chemistry teachers to detect difficulties among their students during the learning of the concept, a field diary to identify the difficulties of the studied sample and an observation grid to show the difficulties of some general chemistry textbooks. The relevant common results coming from applying these four instruments focus on the following aspects: Difficulty of conceptual order for with the handling of fundamental mathematical operations, such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, in addition to the use of conversion factors. Difficulty in balancing chemical equations by the redox method. Marked difficulty in establishing stoichiometric relationships from a balanced chemical equation and lack of understanding of the origin of the term stoichiometry from a historical and epistemological perspective.