How have collegues overcome inertia to the introduction of alternative practical procedures in high school/seconday school chemistry lessons?
These are difficult times for presenting practical work to students in schools. Social distancing and cleaning of equipment to reduce the spread of the virus has meant that the amount of student practical work has been reduced, even stopped in some schools in the UK. By alternative procedures I mean microchemistry techniques, “green” chemistry alternatives and specific practical designed to challenge the misconceptions which abound in our subject. Misconceptions arise because we are dealing with particles, which are so small they are invisible to the naked eye, which may be electrically charged and are in constant random motion, colliding with each other..
Reasons provided by teachers involve constraints set by National Exams, bought-in courses, Textbooks, lack to continual professional development (CPD), cost of equipment and chemicals, lack of inspiration and encouragement from education manager and suitability of the room being used. You may suggest more.
Do you finding writing in peer-reviewed Educational Journals useful?
Do you find non--peer reviewed social media such as Twitter or Facebook, reaches far more teachers and has more impact than Journals, becaue it is short snappy and attention grabbing.
I would like to hear your views.
Since the emergence of digitalization, we are moving more and more towards “a machine for every process or problem” This is good for achieving efficiency and effectiveness and for large unimaginative technology companies that follow a marketing strategy as ”convenience suppliers”. However, in school pupils should learn fundamentals of processes. In micro chemistry there is basically no difference between traditional chemistry except scale. So, if you can’t see particles you may be able to precipitate, to concentrate, to color, to separate in order to make them visible. Under Corona condition you don’t have to do that in a lab – you could ask kids to do that at home in their kitchen with household equipment.
I am also amazed that in high-school environments pupils are not taught about the most important purification-separation technologies. They grow up without understanding that today we separate any mixture into its individual particles or molecular components. And so, they do not understand that we should not cheat or lie because we can trace any evidence say in biology, forensics, analytical chemistry etc. The excuse of “too expansive” we are currently addressing by creating a low-cost chromatography instrument for schools. (see https://www.chromatographyshop.com/product/scholar-lc-system/ ) We are preparing easy to handle instructions and experiments that are relevant in our time and exciting. The idea is to get the pupils to do the experiments. Environmental education is best done by involving scholars to change the world.
Writing in Educational Journals cannot be wiped out. Integration of this with Online Group Discussion would have more impact on the Students' Academics Achievement .
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Chemistry