Chemistry, teaching, and renewal

Chemistry for whom? Gender awareness in teaching and learning chemistry

Marie Ståhl and Anita Hussénius have defined what discourses dominate national tests in chemistry for Grade 9 in Sweden by using feminist, critical didactic perspectives. This response seeks to expand the results in Ståhl and Hussénius’s article Chemistry inside an epistemological community box!—Discursive exclusions and inclusions in the Swedish national tests in chemistry, by using different ...

Polymer Laboratory: Teaching Polymer Chemistry

This work aims to present the results achieved within the science communication project CV/PVI/1386-Laboratório de Polímeros (Polymer Laboratory), financed by Ciência Viva Agência Nacional para a Cultura Científica e Tecnológica (2006-2008). Several demonstration/experimental kits were developed concerning three main thematics: (1) Polymer concepts; (2) Polymer synthesis and (3) Polymer propert...

Chemistry Teaching at School - Problems and Solutions

Recent years have seen the subsiding interest in sciences, including Chemistry, among young people. In general, the cause of this negative tendency has not been clearly defined. To a certain extent it may be due to the transition of our society toward a different political and social system. Another possible cause is the globalization and its impact on the educational process. Chemistry is rega...

Teaching Modern Chemistry through ‘Recurrent Historical Teaching Models’

Today there are little more of 3 million chemist all over the world producing about 800,000 papers a year. They produce new substances – from some hundreds in 1800 to about 20 million now – the vast majority artificial. This rate is growing quite fast. Once the majority of chemistry teachers all over the world used textbooks as the main (sometimes the only) source of information, we became, wit...

Teaching Introductory Chemistry using Concept Development