Learning Chemistry to Enrich Students’ Views on the World they Live In

Abstract

Practicing chemistry involves using chemical knowledge to evaluate benefits, costs and risks associated with products and processes, and to make informed decisions based on reasoned evaluation. Traditional topical approaches to teaching chemistry have been demonstrated to be unsuccessful in providing students such opportunities. Context-based approaches address this; however, to establish stronger effectiveness, a theoretical underpinning is necessary. Starting from Roberts' curriculum emphasis concept, we argue that if students are to develop useful chemical knowledge, they need a clear view on how the chemistry they learn is related to their lives and the world they live in. In other words, the learning environment needs to be positioned in a clearly defined curriculum emphasis. This determines deliberate focus on enriching students' engagement with chemical thinking in real-world problems. Curriculum emphasis can be related to division of labor for different chemical practices, such as a technologist developing new materials for biomedical purposes, a citizen deciding what kind of fuel to use, or a scientist investigating mechanisms of catalysts. Each practice has specific relevance and, consequently, different foci in the content of chemistry. When a certain emphasis or sequence of emphases is chosen for a particular stage in students' learning, a thoughtful co-development of instructional approaches and assessment of students' progress toward using chemical knowledge is required. We provide exemplars of units positioned within a certain emphasis, and show how the curriculum emphasis model shapes curriculum development, as well as development of assessment within the chosen emphasis.

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