A major issue that students struggle with in organic chemistry is cognitive organization: given a particular problem, what, in the great mass of content covered, is needed to solve the problem? Faculty experts, on the other hand, routinely use knowledge transformations to solve chemistry problems, but they do not always emphasize them in teaching and thus these strategies remain hidden to students.

The See-Think-Predict (STP) method, a problem-solving strategy developed to improve students' chemistry understanding and performance, will be presented. Results indicate that use of STP improves students' problem-solving performance and increases their sense of chemistry mastery. STP use appears to enhance student ability because it assists students in understanding and applying expert knowledge transformations. In order to think and solve chemistry problems like an expert, students engage in: 1) visual interpretation of information; 2) meaningful organization of content and facts; 3) consistent application of strategies; 4) cognitive organization (active monitoring of �knowing� versus �not knowing�).

This work has implications for both classroom teaching and student learning. STP appears to be a useful instructional tool for making the expert knowledge transformations involved in solving chemistry problems more explicit. Utilization of STP also infuses the teaching of metacognitive skills into the subject matter, and development of this skill is useful both within and beyond organic chemistry.