Difficulties of items related to energy and matter: Implications for learning progression in high school chemistry

Understanding the development of high school students' ideas and ways of reasoning about matter and energy is of central importance to foster meaningful learning in chemistry courses. Similarly, it is critical to investigate student understanding of models and modeling. In this work, we used computer model-based assessment questions to investigate student understanding of: a) matter and energy, and b) models and modeling, in the context of nine different chemistry topics. The comparison of item difficulty across topics allowed us to elicit a possible learning progression for high school chemistry. The results of our study can inform the development of secondary school chemistry curricula.