#405: Dynamic Equilibrium Across Systems: A Narrative Literature Review of Students’ Difficulties and Conceptual Challenges

This literature review investigates students’ challenges in understanding dynamic equilibrium (DE) across biology, chemistry, and physics. DE describes systems maintaining stability through ongoing opposing processes. Our goal was to identify whether students’ difficulties are phenomenon-specific or reflect cross-disciplinary structural and representational issues. Fifty-four empirical studies were analyzed using deductive and inductive coding, focusing on six representative phenomena: homeostasis and ecological balance (biology), chemical equilibrium and diffusion (chemistry), and constant electric current and uniform motion (physics). Student difficulties were synthesized into six cross-disciplinary themes, organized into two categories: (1) Understanding complex systems (A.1–A.4, 75.5% of the studies), including viewing systems as compartmentalized, confusing micro- and macro-levels, misunderstanding feedback, and perceiving equilibrium as static; (2) Mathematical perspectives (B.1–B.2, 22.1% of the studies), involving confusion base quantities with rates of change and rigid application of procedures without conceptual understanding, We propose cross-disciplinary DE representations emphasizing levels, emergence, and feedback to understanding.