What College Professors Expect

This table and analysis section is in The Journal of Chemical Education, October, 2003 in an article "What Should We Teach in High School Chemistry?" by Kelly Deters.

Table 4: RESULTS. College professors chose their top five topics/skills that students need when they come into their college chemistry courses. See Table 1 for the description of each topic as it appeared on the survey.

Topic	Percent of participants rating topic in their top five
Basic skills	82
Moles	58
Dimensional analysis	56
Stoichiometry	55
Naming/Writing formulas	55
Atomic Structure	44
Balancing equations	44
Lab skills	24
Periodic table	24
Solutions and concentrations	21
Process skills	20
Classification of matter	18
Types of reactions	7
Gases	5
Equilibrium (qual)	5
History	3
Acid/base (simple)	2
Enthalpy	2
Kinetics (qual)	1
Acid/base (complex)	0
Kinetics (quant)	0
Equilibrium (quant)	0

Analysis

For each topic, the percentage of professors including that topic in their top five was calculated. Topics were analyzed for statistical significance between topics using analysis of variance (ANOVA). The null hypothesis was rejected and the Newman-Keuls procedure was used to determine which topics had statistically significantly higher percentage of votes than other topics (16). The top seven topics were statistically significantly higher ranked than the other topics. Table 4 displays the results of the analysis.

Topics that participants included in the other category included: bonding (types and characteristics), Lewis Dot Structures, writing skills, examining the plausibility of answers, connections between the macro/micro worlds, connections to their real-life, and descriptive chemistry. Statistics were not calculated on the frequency of these comments, as it can not be determined how many people would have chosen them in their top five if they had been listed on the survey.