Mentoring via a Decoding Interview: Helping an Instructor Navigate a Bottleneck in Organic Chemistry

Abstract

A useful way to encourage faculty to develop pedagogical content knowledge is to identify bottlenecks that students face. A one-on-one interview of an instructor by a disciplinary novice can identify the challenges that a novice learner faces. Teaching electron motion in organic chemistry is an example of a bottleneck that poses significant challenges for both students to learn and instructors to teach. Students have usually never encountered the ideas associated with moving electrons in a chemical reaction to help predict products; instructors struggle to help learners understand the generalizable facets of chemical reactivity. A sixty-minute Decoding interview was conducted between an instructor with expertise in chemistry with little background in Decoding (IAS) and an experienced interviewer with little background in chemistry (JM). The interview was conducted to better delineate the bottleneck of electron motion for the instructor. The interview highlights the information that can be gleaned through dialogue, as well as demonstrating the value of mentoring, the importance of reflection, and the way that emotions can affect learning.

Bibliographic data

Shibley, I., & Middendorf, J. (2025). Mentoring via a Decoding Interview: Helping an Instructor Navigate a Bottleneck in Organic Chemistry. Transformative Dialogues: Teaching and Learning Journal, 18(3), 84-97.

External source

https://doi.org/10.59236/td2025vol18iss31920