Learning about the chemistry topic of equilibrium: the use of word association tests to detect developing conceptualizations

Word association tests have been used to follow the concepts of chemical equilibrium being learned by thirty, 14 year‐old pupils in an English comprehensive school. The single stimulus word Equilibrium was found to reveal the interfering concepts that were blocking learning. Principal among these were ‘static balance’, ‘reversing as physical movement’ and ‘equilibrium when everything is equal’. The word association tests have been developed by using stimuli embedded in sentences and allowing multi‐word responses. Individual students’ ideas were explored, using the word association tests, together with introspective reports obtained by asking the students what their responses meant. In this way the idiosyncratic ideas of the pupils were revealed and were related to individual learning difficulties.