The author replies to Tóth.Zóltan Tóth's letter contains some of the same points as those raised by Alan L. H. Smith (1). Both writers would encourage students to work a Pathway from the two ends (Given and Objective), which has its advantages, especially for the more expert problem solvers. A more detailed discussion of this item is found in my response to Smith's letter. Tóth's second point is very interesting: using the Pathway approach to have students "fill in the blanks" in a chemical puzzle. This is something I have never tried, which might indeed add to the variety of activities that we can suggest to our students. His final point concerns my research decision to group the Parameter-use values of 0 and 1 as one group and 2 and 3 as the other group. My reason for putting the 1's with the 0's is that often students who have really no idea at all how to proceed in the logic of a problem will use the method as a last resort. "Major errors" or "very incomplete" Pathways are indications of this type of strategy. On the other hand, those students who obtained a 2 or 3 showed mastery of the method, and that was the point of this analysis. I hope this makes it clearer why I divided the groups as I did. Literature Cited- Smith, A. L. H. J. Chem. Educ. 2004, 81, 803.
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