Abstract:
Two groups of high school chemistry students were instructed in the gas laws with one of two possible treatments. One group was taught with a traditional textbook curriculum and one group was taught using constructivist strategies based on the mathematical modeling method. Pretest and post test data were collected from each group and analyzed to determine if either instructional method would show greater student understanding of the gas laws. Both methods were determined to have statistically significant positive effects on student post test scores. However, neither method showed a statistically significant higher mean gain in test scores.
