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Chemical Misconceptions is a product of the Royal Society of
Chemistry’s program for the support of education in the chemical
sciences. Keith Taber was a 2000–2001 RSC School Teacher Fellow,
and he developed these materials in order to help teachers take into
account the “alternative conceptions” that students bring
to their study of chemistry. He acknowledges nearly 100 teachers at
schools from elementary level to university who helped develop and test
this approach to conceptual learning. He recommends in Chapter 1 that
chemistry teachers find out what students are thinking about scientific
ideas even before instruction has begun and explore student perceptions
of chemical concepts on a continuing basis as an essential part of the
teaching–learning process. Chapter 2 discusses the
questions, “What is a chemical concept?” and “Why are
concepts hard to learn?”. Part of the problem is that textbooks
try to make distinctions that are not useful to the learner. My
favorite example is the difference between chemical and physical
changes, and Taber confirms that teachers and students find it
difficult to place processes like the dissolution of sodium chloride in
either category. Visual depictions of chemical situations and the
relationships of ideas are an important part of Chemical
Misconceptions, consistent with the growing trend toward
schematics in the teaching and the assessment of chemical concepts.
(The worksheets in Volume II are full of cartoons of chemical systems
and processes.) Taber uses concept maps liberally, giving several
examples for teaching chemistry in Chapter 3, “The Structure of
Chemical Knowledge”, but uses them elsewhere to illustrate his
own ideas. Impediments to learning are discussed in Chapter 4,
and Taber does not exclude the obvious ones, such as lack of
attendance, physical conditions, distractions, and lack of motivation.
But he also discusses failures in communication and several types of
“learning impediments”, each of which would require a
change in the method of teaching. In Chapter 5, the construction of new
understanding based on earlier concepts is introduced. Taber calls this
“scaffolding”, and he recommends using Directed Activities
Related to Text (DARTs), Providing Outlines Lending Support (POLES),
and Platforms for New Knowledge (PLANKs). Despite the overdrawn
acronyms, there is real insight into constructivism here. The teaching
of the “big ideas” of chemistry are discussed in Chapters
6–9, “Chemical Axioms”, “Chemical
Structure”, “Chemical Bonding”, and “Chemical
Reactions”, respectively. The reader unfamiliar with the
constructivist approach to teaching might benefit by first reading
Chapter 10, “Constructing Chemical Conceptions”, because it
provides examples of how constructivism can help to prevent or to
remediate student misconceptions. Taber provides references to
supporting research in numerous endnotes for each chapter of Volume
I. Volume II contains student worksheets. In the UK, chemistry
concepts appear in the curriculum somewhat earlier than in the United
States. Some of the lessons in Volume II are labeled as being
appropriate for 11–14-year-old students, some for
14–16-year olds, and the rest for post-16 students. Taken all
together, they do not constitute a chemistry course, but they could be
very useful as grist for peer-learning environments. I would have found
them more useful in my own introductory chemistry course if fewer of
them relied heavily on Bohr atom depictions, which I try to avoid.
Teachers are encouraged to photocopy the worksheets in this volume, and
the spiral binding facilitates that. Worksheets are also available for
free download in Word or PDF formats (accessed Mar 2003), but the online
archive does not include the introductory discussion or the
answers.
In summary, I found this to be the most useful new
resource on methods of teaching chemistry since Dudley Herron’s
The Chemistry Classroom1.
Note
- Herron, J. Dudley. The Chemistry Classroom:
Formulas for Successful Teaching; American Chemical Society:
Washington, DC, 1996.
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