Concept Inventories: Predicting the Wrong Answer May Boost Performance

Several concept inventories have been developed to elicit students’ alternative conceptions in chemistry. It is suggested that heuristic reasoning may bias students’ answers in these types of assessments toward intuitively appealing choices. If this is the case, one could expect students to improve their performance by engaging in more analytical reasoning. Research has shown that analytical reasoning is activated when people experience metacognitive difficulty or conflict. This study presents the results of an intervention designed to trigger one of such experiences by asking students to make predictions about the wrong answers most commonly selected by unreflective students. Major findings show that this simple prompt has a significant positive impact on students’ answers, regardless of their academic performance in the course. The effects, however, are not uniform across different topics.