Analysis of failures in chemistry-related disciplines and the creation of a leveling discipline

Abstract

The objectives of this work are: to analyze the low performance in the disciplines of General Chemistry I and Environmental Chemistry, between the years 2012-2 and 2016-2, in the Higher Course of Environmental Management, at the Federal Institute of Rio de Janeiro (IFRJ) of the Maracanã Campus; report the creation of a leveling discipline called "Fundamentals of Chemistry", which aimed to mitigate the low performance in Chemistry-related disciplines, due to the high retention and, consequently, the dropout of students; We also investigate the performance of students after the introduction of this discipline in the course between 2017-1 and 2018-2. The methodology used was the elaboration of graphs that could show the percentage of failures of students in these two disciplines, over the years, before the creation of the leveling discipline, and after. The results were very worrying. The discipline of Environmental Chemistry had rates of more than 60% of failures, from 13% in the year 2016-1 alone. In the discipline of General Chemistry I, the situation was much worse, with the lowest index, in 2014-1 and 2015-1, equal to 59%. After the creation of the leveling course, the results improved significantly for the Environmental Chemistry course, but not for the General Chemistry I course, which still had high failure rates. It is concluded that it is still necessary to investigate more about the conjuncture of failure, retention, probable cause of abandonment of the course, that is, of dropout.

DOI:https://doi.org/10.56238/sevened2024.004-003