Students’ perceptions of an Observe-Predict-Explain-Notation-Extend (OPENEd) as a strategy to promote students’ understanding of the three levels of representation on solution topic

Learning chemistry successfully depends on students’ competence to coordinate a relationship within the three levels of representation in various concepts of chemistry. In addition, students should be engaged to elaborate chemistry concepts on daily life phenomena for meaningful learning. However, the harmonization of both issues in real practice has been challenged for chemistry teachers. Therefore, a new learning strategy called Observe-Predict-Explain-Notation- Extend (OPENEd) was developed in accordance with context-based learning to enhance students' conceptual understanding of the three levels of representation as well as to realize the importance of chemistry on a daily life basis. Concepts in solution topics were designed to be learning activities via the OPENEd strategy. The learning activities were implemented for 40 students in 10th-grade. After finishing the learning activity, students’ perceptions of the new strategy were investigated quantitatively using a questionnaire. The results indicate that students have a positive perception towards the learning activities. In terms of understanding, students perceived that the activities could enhance their understanding of the solution topic and allow them to relate the concepts to daily life. Moreover, students perceived that the activities could promote scientific skills. Thus, the strategy could be further developed on other topics in chemistry.