Identifying and addressing students' learning difficulties in hydrolysis using testlet instrument

Abstract

Understanding how students learn and what difficulties exist in teaching and learning process is difficult for teachers to effectively do. Identifying students' learning difficulties and finding the effective ways of addressing them have been the two of major concerns in chemistry education. The aims of this research were to identify and to address students' learning difficulties in hydrolysis using testlet assessment instrument. The purpose-designed survey method was used in this research with a testlet instrument for identifying students' learning difficulties in hydrolysis subject. The categories for classifying students' difficulties were conceptual knowledge, numeracy, and interpretation. Testlet instruments consisting of 10 stems. Each stem has three supporting questions, were tested on 151 eleventh-grade students from 3 representative schools in Surakarta. The research findings indicate that the testlet instrument can be used as an alternative instrument for identifying students' learning difficulties. The students tend to have learning difficulties in determining the hydrolysed ion. In addition, they had learning difficulties in interpretation indicator. The findings could provide the teachers with sufficiently valuable information required in order to adapt their teaching methods to the students' needs.