Instructors are constantly baffled by the fact that two students who are sitting in the same class, who have access to the same materials, can come to understand a particular chemistry concept differently. Variation theory offers a theoretical framework from which to explore possible variations in experience and the resulting differences in…

Much scholarship in chemical education draws upon the model of there being three "levels" at which the teaching and learning of chemistry operates, a notion which is often represented graphically in terms of a triangle with the apices labelled as macroscopic, submicroscopic and symbolic. This model was proposed by Johnstone who argued that…

Five high-school chemistry teachers were asked to enact a lesson in which they posed a problem for which students were likely to generate solutions based on reasoning that was not aligned with accepted principles of chemistry. Four teachers selected a problem related to the stoichiometry of a reaction; the fifth chose a problem associated with…

This article summarises the author's experiences in running a module "Computers for Chemistry" entirely online for the past four years. The module, previously taught in a face-to-face environment, was reconfigured for teaching in an online environment. The rationale for moving online along with the design, implementation and evaluation of the…

This paper describes the development and evaluation of a secondary school lesson plan for chemistry education on the topic Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). The lessons focus both on the chemistry of plastics and on learning about the societal evaluation of competing, chemistry-based industrial products. A specific teaching method was…

"Sustainability" is a very general term and the question arises how to specify it within daily laboratory work. In this regard, appropriate metrics could support a socially acceptable, ecological and economic product development. The application of metrics for sustainability should be strengthened in education, because they do not belong to…

The purpose of this article is to describe a best practice: an approach to teaching chemistry that our quantitative research has shown to produce large differences between experimental and control groups in terms of achievement, pro-environmental attitudes, values, and motivation. Our interest in teaching chemistry by focusing on sustainable…

The principles of sustainable development have been integrated in chemical engineering education by means of an environmental management system. These principles have been introduced in the teaching laboratories where students perform their practical classes. In this paper, the implementation of the environmental management system, the problems…

A number of scientific articles report on the use of natural extracts from plants as chemical reagents, where the main objective is to present the scientific applications of those natural plant extracts. The author suggests that natural reagents extracted from plants can be used as alternative low cost tools in teaching chemical analysis,…

The concept of "Education for Sustainable Development", ESD, has been introduced in a period where chemistry education is undergoing a major change, both in emphasis and methods of teaching. Studying an everyday problem, with an important socio-economic impact in the laboratory is a part of this approach. Presently, the students in many countries…

Despite being criticised for placing little emphasis on thinking, the majority of laboratory work at school level is taught "via" expository "recipe-style" labs. This has been seen to result in students struggling to be able to apply the practical techniques they have learnt in the classroom outside the narrow environment in which they were…

A Chemistry Concept Reasoning Test was created and validated providing an easy-to-use tool for measuring conceptual understanding and critical scientific thinking of general chemistry models and theories. The test is designed to measure concept understanding comparable to that found in free-response questions requiring explanations over…

A hybrid course of Molecular Symmetry and Group Theory which combines traditional face-to-face instruction with an online web enhanced learning environment within a Course Management System was designed, developed, and implemented with a purpose to establish an active and student-centred educational setting. Multi-representational educational…

Despite multiple calls for reform, the curriculum for first-year college chemistry at many universities across the world is still mostly fact-based and encyclopedic, built upon a collection of isolated topics, oriented too much towards the perceived needs of chemistry majors, focused too much on abstract concepts and algorithmic problem solving,…

The role of assessment in the chemistry classroom is ultimately tied to the nature of the assessments available for use. Because they provide data that can inform decisions about curricular changes, or new pedagogies, the incorporation of new assessment strategies can play an important role in how educational and curriculum reform is carried out.…