As a teacher, we often encounter learning gaps on the part of our students. We associate these gaps to the students' lack of motivation, difficulty of the content (due to its abstract nature perhaps) and incompetence of the teacher. Which one is valid as backed up by your research? Or do you have other factors?
I think that students often lack of motivation and have not a clear perspective of their future studies, also if the professionality of the teacher is significant. But if the student is motivated, learning will be surely easier.
Chemistry can be taught in different ways and the pedagogical approach impacts on my response.
If taught for understanding then the main factors are engagement or cognitive ability. When learning something new all people will have gaps. Noone completely assimilates new ideas completely. Different people will have different gaps depending on the conceptual framework in their head at any moment. The point is once taught for understanding, new ideas will be taken on board according to engagement and ability.
If taught asba body of content, the response is more complicated. Taught this way students have to construct their conceptual framework themselves and as i found myself, having been taught like this (I was taught chemistry more than 40 years ago), the conceptual framework can be quite mixed up or just never interrelated, so themproblem here is more about luck and ability to create conceptual frameworks of new information.
It depends on several factors the first is understanding the language well the understanding the principles and fundamentals the research will be more difficult than courses
Is luck as what Mark stated above could be one of success factor in learning? Is it that luck where the new information was processed or successfully penetrated the cognitive framework of the mind? Then maybe the problem is that some of our learners are not ready to absorb chemistry lessons where it require higher order thinking skills. That being the case, do we really have to tone down the level of teaching or simplify the content to adjust to their level?
The luck component only applies when Chemistry is taught as content, and students have to construct their own conceptual web, and was not meant to relate to their cognitive ability, though that plays a part in constructing a better framework of understanding. The rest of your point however applies to chemistry taught as concepts as well so the short answer is YES for THAT learner. How that is done on 1 to 1 or 1 to few basis depends on the context. I never have to teach chemistry to more than 25 at a time and I teach conceptually so I spend as much time questioning and talking with them as telling them or showing them. I can take time to talk to individuals or small groups to sort out conceptual weaknesses. In some cases I aim students to just a pass, rather than a higher result. Even then, I aim their thinking just a bit more than I think they have mastered.
As a subject chemistry is one of the oldest. This is one of the most useful subject. it has a large number of branches. Most of these branches have good market value. One should be master in his subject as to get more opportunity and prospects. For research point there is much more to do if compare with other subjects. This Science is very much interesting and have good future also.
Chemistry is an experimental science. In my experience the problem with teaching chemistry is not being able to keep it relevant to the students. There is a lot of information that needs to be assimilated before an understanding in the subject can be developed. Integrating experimental demonstrations, which are often visually stimulating, motivates the students through the, often tedious, learning part. If one can pick a contemporary problem and use it as a motivation for learning chemistry, one may be more successful in keeping students interested. Of course these are only important when teaching undergraduates.
I have a teaching experience which extends to 35 years (3 of them were teaching general sciences to school students & 32 of them teaching chemistry for university students).
In my opinion, the university students of today lack concentration on the subjects they study & they also lack dedication. There are many factors which cause their distraction & the students do not have the motives to possess the top know-how in their fields of study.
Of course, I do not blame the students entirely & I think we have to review our education system at school level as well as at university level every now & then. If we want a successful teaching-learning process, there is bad need to support the teacher so as the old esteem is bestowed on him/her again. The support ought to be financial & moral and this input to the catalyst of the whole process(i.e. teacher) will result in high quality output (i.e. students).
One of the responsibilities of the teacher is to instill in the students the value of the science they are learning & its impact on their lives and future. We have to teach them that the learning process is cumulative systematic step-by-step & it does not occur jump-wise so what seems to be difficult today may become very easy tomorrow.
The basic concepts in chemistry or science always remains same and are applicable every where . The simple concepts can be better understood by crude examples. The concept of the definition of measurement, method of measurement and measurement procedure can be better understood by a good model such as a timetable for a train ( or a recipe for a cake) does not automatically guarantee that the train is on time ( or the cake is all right).
In measurement one should remember that neither the method , nor the measurement principle nor the institution where the measurement is carried out , is of the highest importance, but the measurement result and its accompanying uncertainty statement.
For the analysis of water, sampling and its preservation are essential.
Absolutely Sir Rathore. And what do we have to say about the result of our effort (process) ? In my case the lackluster attitude of my students boil down to not being able to relate to the content. We say that the concept has not change much but is the lifestyle of today and the learning process has to do with the learning difficulty?
There are various steps of learning and teaching process: Knowledge, understanding, application, analysis and synthesis. We have to correlate with the previous knowledge of students through models/experiments. e.g., concept of diazotization and coupling reactions. This reaction can be used for nitrite detection and spectrophotometric determination, preparations of different azo dyes, these dyes finds many applications as a photometric reagents in the determination of metals, colouring of fabrics, etc. In addition to, the same azo dye reaction can be used for the designing of new chelating polymeric resins ( e.g., XAD functionalzed chelating polymeric resins) as metal ions extractants etc.
Testing of distilled water by conductance determination, chloride and sulphate tests etc.
In my experience, students' motivation is an important factor. It depend of many factors as those that you wrote. Also, you can consider study habits of students (how they study a course as chemistry).
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