Students and instructors may be frustrated with students' lack of understanding of sociological concepts. We suggest that the difficulty of teaching and learning sociology is that sociological concepts and relationships require the use of abstract reasoning patterns. Many students are unaccustomed to using these abstract reasoning patterns. We use…

The development of the Test of Logical Thinking (TOLT), a group test of formal reasoning ability that requires students to solve problems and to justify the solutions obtained, is presented. Procedures are described for investigations of internal consistency, construct validity, and criterion-related validity. Items used in prior research serve as…

Although students' misconceptions about the concept of chemical equilibrium has been the focus of numerous investigations, few have investigated students' systematic errors when solving equilibrium problems at the college level. Students (n=189) enrolled in the second semester of a first year chemistry course for science and engineering majors at…