Changing Perspectives on the Undergraduate Chemistry Curriculum

Abstract

In this chapter, I will discuss the role of universities in this changing world, and more particularly how we can train future chemists in such a way that they are adequately equipped to contribute to meet these future challenges. This chapter describes how ideas about teaching and curriculum in universities have changed over the last decades. Although some ideas have influenced the way we teach chemistry in the undergraduate curriculum, the way the curriculum is structured in courses has stayed more or less unchanged. I will present a new division of chemistry from a competency-based perspective, which can be used as the basis for the structure of a new curriculum. The Traditional Undergraduate CurriculumI begin this chapter with a characterization of what I call the "traditional curriculum" for undergraduate chemistry programs at colleges and universities. Hake [1] defines traditional courses as "[courses that] make little or no use of IE [interactive-engagement] methods, relying primarily on passive-student lectures, recipe labs, and algorithmic-problem exams" (p. 65). Hake's wordings make clear that the word "traditional" has a negative connotation, but I will use the word "traditional" in a more neutral sense to describe teaching methods that have a long history. In this meaning, the word "traditional" opposes "modern" teaching methods, which have become popular during the last decades, but I realize that a sharp distinction between "traditional" and "recent" cannot be made.In this chapter, I will use the description of curriculum given by Hass [2]. Hass states that a curriculum means "all of the experiences that individual learners have in a program of education whose purpose is to achieve broad goals and related specific objectives, which is planned in terms of a framework of theory and research or past and present professional practice" (p. 5). Also, other authors define curriculum broadly, including all decisions taken in a school to enable the learning of students. This involves the attainment targets of the entire program and objectives of individual courses, the organization of the program in subjects and courses, the

Flipped learning in higher education chemistry: emerging trends and potential directions

“…Much of this is underpinned by the dominance and generally accepted framework of constructivism, which to educators in classrooms translates as applying active learning approaches (Goedhart, 2015). There is an (often implicit) sense in the introductory paragraphs of the various articles that something other than what is currently practised is worth trying.…”

“…Recently Cooper made the argument that students consider tests and quizzes that are graded most important, and thus if we attribute value to some component of our curricular reform, it must have a grade attributed to it (Cooper, 2015). Allowing students to develop an awareness of the difficulties they are facing and how they can address these is a means of facilitating the development of their metacognitive strategies, whereby students can monitor their own development and understanding (Goedhart, 2015). This was formalised in the approaches used in some cases: Fautch (2015) and Seery (2015) both asked students what topics they found difficult and these were addressed in lectures, while Flynn (2015) used questions where the performance was poor as a basis for in-class discussion questions.…”

“…There is an (often implicit) sense in the introductory paragraphs of the various articles that something other than what is currently practised is worth trying. Much of this is underpinned by the dominance and generally accepted framework of constructivism, which to educators in classrooms translates as applying active learning approaches (Goedhart, 2015). Lecture flipping could also be viewed through the lens of cognitive load theory.…”

“…Part of the reason for the predominance of this model is that alternatives must be viable and coherent, and seen to be 'rigorous' by chemistry faculty (Talanquer and Pollard, 2010). Nevertheless, there is an acknowledgement that chemistry, especially at an introductory level is currently taught in a manner that is encyclopaedic, aiming to cover too much in an abstract and disconnected way (Bodner, 1992;Goedhart, 2015). Developments, when they do occur, can often be seen as piecemeal (Bennett and Overton, 2010) and hence lack overall cohesion and impact.…”

Are the dominant teaching theories in higher education adequate to underpin teaching practices in enterprise and entrepreneurship context?

“…In other words, teaching has conventionally been associated with the notion that there is a truth proposition (knowledge) or an established theory that can be disseminated via the agency of the teacher (Jarvis, 2006b). Not only the conceptions but also the dominant teaching practices in universities continue to portray this transmittive, didactic, teacher-centered traditional lecturing approach or its remnants (Ramsden, 2003;Jarvis, 2006a;Kember, 2009;Goedhart, 2015), where the students passively accept the information given by the instructor (Jarvis, 1995;McComas, 2013).…”