Exploring High School Students’ Chemical Explanatory Levels of Thin-Layer Chromatography through Reflective Inquiry

Students’ scientific competencies can be improved by structured inquiry. Inquiry teaching laboratories that involve thin-layer chromatography (TLC) techniques most often involve students examining experimental results. In addition to the integration of structured inquiry into the teaching laboratories of TLC, this quasi-experimental study involved students in reflection on experimental procedures. We aimed to investigate the impacts of this combination of structured inquiry and reflection (i.e., reflective inquiry) on students’ chemical explanatory levels. A total of n = 107 11th grade students participated in this study. Students in the experimental group (EG; n = 58) engaged in a 10-week reflective inquiry while students in the comparison group (CG; n = 49) engaged in confirmation inquiry. Results showed that reflective inquiry enhanced students’ explanations at the experiential level. At the theoretical descriptive level, students displayed misconceptions or misinterpretation of scientific concepts. Furthermore, presenting the dynamic interactions within the TLC system at the theoretical explanatory level was challenging to students. The TLC assessment can provide chemistry teachers with the opportunity to diagnose students’ misconceptions of the TLC system at both the experiential level and the theoretical explanatory level.