Teaching Chemistry Around The World

As teachers we often tend to expect other countries to teach chemistry in much the same way as we do, but educational systems differ widely. At Bielefeld University we started a project to analyse the approach to chemical education in different countries from all over the world: Teaching Chemistry around the World. 25 countries have participated in the project. The resulting country studies are presented in this book. This book may be seen as a contribution to make the structure of chemistry teaching in numerous countries more transparent and to facilitate communication between these countries. Especially in the case of the school subject chemistry, which is very unpopular on the one hand and occupies an exceptional position on the other hand – due to its relevance to jobs and everyday life and most notably due to its importance for innovation capacity and problem solving – we have to learn from each others’ educational systems.

This book is aimed at chemistry teachers, teacher educators, chemistry education researchers, and all those who are interested in increasing the relevance of chemistry teaching and learning as well as students' perception of it. The book consists of 20 chapters. Each chapter focuses on a certain issue related to the relevance of chemistry education. These chapters are based on a recently suggested model of the relevance of science education, encompassing individual, societal, and vocational relevance, its present and future implications, as well as its intrinsic and extrinsic aspects. “Two highly distinguished chemical educators, Ingo Eilks and AviHofstein, have brought together 40 internationally renowned colleagues from 16 countries to offer an authoritative view of chemistry teaching today. Between them, the authors, in 20 chapters, give an exceptional description of the current state of chemical education and signpost the future in both research and in the classroom. There is special emphasis on the many attempts to enthuse students with an understanding of the central science, chemistry, which will be helped by having an appreciation of the role of the science in today’s world. Themes which transcend all education such as collaborative work, communication skills, attitudes, inquiry learning and teaching, and problem solving are covered in detail and used in the context of teaching modern chemistry. The book is divided into four parts which describe the individual, the societal, the vocational and economic, and the non-formal dimensions and the editors bring all the disparate leads into a coherent narrative, that will be highly satisfying to experienced and new researchers and to teachers with the daunting task of teaching such an intellectually demanding subject. Just a brief glance at the index and the references will convince anyone interested in chemical education that this book is well worth studying; it is scholarly and readable and has tackled the most important issues in chemical education today and in the foreseeable future.” – Professor David Waddington, Emeritus Professor in Chemistry Education, University of York, United Kingdom

Educating the next generation of chemists about green chemistry issues, such as waste minimisation and clean synthesis, is vital for environmental sustainability. This book enables green issues to be taught from the underlying principles of all chemistry courses rather than in isolation. Chapters contributed by green chemistry experts from across the globe, with experience in teaching at different academic levels, provide a coherent overview of possible approaches to incorporate green chemistry into existing curriculums. Split into three sections, the book first introduces sustainability and green chemistry education , before focussing on high school green chemistry education initiatives and green chemistry education at undergraduate and post-graduate levels. Useful laboratory experiments and in-class activities to aid teaching are included. This book is a valuable resource for chemical educators worldwide who wish to integrate green chemistry into chemical education in a systematic and holistic way. It is also of interest to anyone wanting to learn more about the different approaches adopted around the world in sustainability education.

This book focuses on developing and updating prospective and practicing chemistry teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge. The 11 chapters of the book discuss the most essential theories from general and science education, and in the second part of each of the chapters apply the theory to examples from the chemistry classroom. Key sentences, tasks for self-assessment, and suggestions for further reading are also included. The book is focused on many different issues a teacher of chemistry is concerned with. The chapters provide contemporary discussions of the chemistry curriculum, objectives and assessment, motivation, learning difficulties, linguistic issues, practical work, student active pedagogies, ICT, informal learning, continuous professional development, and teaching chemistry in developing environments. This book, with contributions from many of the world’s top experts in chemistry education, is a major publication offering something that has not previously been available. Within this single volume, chemistry teachers, teacher educators, and prospective teachers will find information and advice relating to key issues in teaching (such as the curriculum, assessment and so forth), but contextualised in terms of the specifics of teaching and learning of chemistry, and drawing upon the extensive research in the field. Moreover, the book is written in a scholarly style with extensive citations to the literature, thus providing an excellent starting point for teachers and research students undertaking scholarly studies in chemistry education; whilst, at the same time, offering insight and practical advice to support the planning of effective chemistry teaching. This book should be considered essential reading for those preparing for chemistry teaching, and will be an important addition to the libraries of all concerned with chemical education. Dr Keith S. Taber (University of Cambridge; Editor: Chemistry Education Research and Practice) The highly regarded collection of authors in this book fills a critical void by providing an essential resource for teachers of chemistry to enhance pedagogical content knowledge for teaching modern chemistry. Through clever orchestration of examples and theory, and with carefully framed guiding questions, the book equips teachers to act on the relevance of essential chemistry knowledge to navigate such challenges as context, motivation to learn, thinking, activity, language, assessment, and maintaining professional expertise. If you are a secondary or post-secondary teacher of chemistry, this book will quickly become a favorite well-thumbed resource! Professor Hannah Sevian (University of Massachusetts Boston)

Chemistry is a subject that has the power to engage and enthuse students but also to mystify and confound them. Effective chemistry teaching requires a strong foundation of subject knowledge and the ability to transform this into teachable content which is meaningful for students. Drawing on pedagogical principles and research into the difficulties that many students have when studying chemical concepts, this essential text presents the core ideas of chemistry to support new and trainee chemistry teachers, including non-specialists. The book focuses on the foundational ideas that are fundamental to and link topics across the discipline of chemistry and considers how these often complex notions can be effectively presented to students without compromising on scientific authenticity. Chapters cover: the nature of chemistry as a science the chemistry triplet substances and purity in chemistry the periodic table energy in chemistry and chemical bonding contextualising and integrating chemical knowledge Whilst there are a good many books describing chemistry and many others that offer general pedagogic guidance on teaching science, Foundations for Teaching Chemistry provides accounts of core chemical topics from a teaching perspective and offers new and experienced teachers support in developing their own ‘chemical knowledge for teaching’.

This edited volume of papers from the twenty first International Conference on Chemical Education attests to our rapidly changing understanding of the chemistry itself as well as to the potentially enormous material changes in how it might be taught in the future. Covering the full range of appropriate topics, the book features work exploring themes as various as e-learning and innovations in instruction, and micro-scale lab chemistry. In sum, the 29 articles published in these pages focus the reader’s attention on ways to raise the quality of chemistry teaching and learning, promoting the public understanding of chemistry, deploying innovative technology in pedagogy practice and research, and the value of chemistry as a tool for highlighting sustainability issues in the global community. Thus the ambitious dual aim achieved in these pages is on the one hand to foster improvements in the leaching and communication of chemistry—whether to students or the public, and secondly to promote advances in our broader understanding of the subject that will have positive knock-on effects on the world’s citizens and environment. In doing so, the book addresses (as did the conference) the neglect suffered in the chemistry classroom by issues connected to globalization, even as it outlines ways to bring the subject alive in the classroom through the use of innovative technologies.

The main objective of this monograph is to incorporate history and philosophy of science in the chemistry curriculum in order to provide students an overview of the dynamics of scientific research, which involves controversies, conflicts and rivalries among scientists, that is the humanising aspects of science. A major thesis of this book is the parallel between the construction of knowledge by the students and the scientists. In looking for this relationship, it is not necessary that ontogeny recapitulate phylogeny, but rather to establish that students can face similar difficulties in conceptualising problems as those faced by the scientists in the past. Given the vast amount of literature on students' alternative conceptions (misconceptions) in science, it is plausible to suggest that these can be considered not as mistakes, but rather as tentative models, leading to greater conceptual understanding. Just as scientists resist changes in the 'hard-core' of their beliefs by offering 'auxiliary hypotheses', students may adopt similar strategies. Conceptual change, in science education can thus be conceptualised as building of tentative models that provide greater explanatory power to students' understanding.