Logical Reasoning Profiles and General Chemistry Performance at a Hispanic-Serving Institution

Logical reasoning is important for success in introductory chemistry, yet the reasoning profiles of students at Hispanic-serving institutions remain underreported.This study used the Group Assessment of Logical Thinking (GALT) to characterize the reasoning skills of 140 students enrolled in General Chemistry I at the University of Puerto Rico at Cayey during the first semester of the 2018-2019 academic year.Internal consistency of the instrument was acceptable (Cronbach's # = 0.731, Spearman-Brown = 0.753, and Guttman split-half = 0.751).Based on total GALT scores, 25.7% of students were classified as formal reasoners, 29.3% as transitional reasoners, and 45.0% as concrete reasoners, indicating that most participants had not yet reached the formal operational level.Across reasoning modes, students performed best in mass/volume conservation and combinatorial reasoning, and weakest in proportional, probabilistic, and correlational reasoning.Descriptive comparisons by final course grade, gender, and academic year suggested that stronger logical reasoning tended to align with better course outcomes, whereas lowerperforming students were more frequently represented in the transitional and concrete groups.These findings provide a local profile of students' reasoning skills in General Chemistry and suggest that introductory chemistry instruction may benefit from more explicit support for abstract reasoning.