Chemical Education Today edited by
Jonathan R. Hill University of Iowa Iowa City 52242
A Postcard from Croatia: Where Would We Like To Proceed in Chemical Education? Nenad Judas Laboratory of General and Inorganic Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb, Croatia; Horvatovac 102a, HR-10000 Zagreb, Croatia;
[email protected] Croatia is a country in transition facing various social and political changes and, correspondingly, facing the reform of its educational system. The Government of Croatia stated its view about a national education policy by putting in place the Education Sector Development Plan 2005-2010 (1). The plan clearly emphasized that priorities in educational development include improving the quality and efficiency of education and supporting the continuing professional development of teachers and other education personnel. The Croatian National Education Standards (CNES) (2) is the basis for making changes in the program and teachinglearning methods at the primary education level. CNES has been experimentally implemented during the 2005-2006 school year. A public, nongovernmental institution, the Ivo Pilar Institute of Social Sciences has been evaluating the effects of following the Experimental CNES Chemistry Program in the classroom. The Institute found that implementing CNES has had a positive impact on both teachers' and students' satisfaction with chemistry education. This assessment also noted that incorporating CNES has led to greater efficiency in the development of students' cognitive levels. A Brief History of the Problem The last four decades have seen several reforms of the Croatian education system. CNES, which began in 2005, is the most recent one. Although four years is too short a time to objectively evaluate the impact of a huge intervention into an educational system, it is necessary to constantly monitor its progress, at least in particular subject courses such as the sciences. CNES was designed to bring about a change in everyday teaching processes. This was especially needed in science courses, where a conventional lecture approach prevailed, with very few demonstrations and experiments offered. Correspondingly, experts in the fields of chemistry, physics, and biology joined forces and gave their best efforts to implement a small-group, discovery-based learning strategy (SGDBLS) as the main teaching method for all sciences. The origins of this teaching strategy trace back to the ideas of Ariel Guererro (3). For nearly 30 years, several Croatian chemistry teachers have practiced and developed his ideas. The core of those ideas is comparable to the principles of the Vygotskian and Ausubel approaches (4, 5). What Are the Essentials of the Croatian Small-Group Discovery-Based Learning Strategy? SGDBLS positions experiments as the central and basic element of a chemistry lesson. At this point, the reader might 250
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rightly ask two questions: What's new about that? and, What does this mean? The SGDBLS approach is best described by the following simple scheme: experiment f observations f questionsðdiscussionÞ f explanations This means that the teaching-learning process starts with a real experiment and that the knowledge a student already has will be used to explain new observations and will serve as the basis for what is about to be learned. It is evident that CNES provides a learning environment quite different from that offered by the conventional lecture approach. A well-planned and conducted lesson easily engages primary-level students for 90 min (or even more). However, just bringing the experiment before the students in the form of a demonstration or laboratory work is not enough to accomplish the change in the teaching strategy. Very often (and very easily), an experiment can become little more than a confirmation of the teacher's words and the chemical and physical laws described in a lecture. Most contemporary chemical educators would regard such a traditional use of an experiment as a complete educational failure. Students typically perceive such activities as irrelevant and boring because they do not encourage students to actively participate in the learning process. SGDBLS in Action As an example of how SGDBLS might work, let us consider one extremely simple experiment: heating a sample of roomtemperature water in a laboratory beaker with a gas burner. When performing this experiment, most of us will focus on the following: observing that some bubbles form during heating; that more bubbles form as the temperature rises; and that a lot of bubbles are released when the temperature reaches the boiling point of water. In addition to the “expected” observations that a student will make, however, the beginning of the experiment also holds observations that should be noted and afterward explained. For example: Just after the experiment starts, the outside surface of the beaker gets a cloudy film; soon, the film matches the height of the water column inside the beaker; and, finally, the film disappears. But all of this happens within the first 30 s, long before the first bubble of gas forms inside the beaker! Providing correct explanations to these observations might be a dynamic and creative challenge to both the students and the teacher, especially if the teacher chooses only to ask questions while guiding students to the correct answer. For example, the
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Vol. 87 No. 3 March 2010 pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc r 2010 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc. 10.1021/ed8001013 Published on Web 02/09/2010
Chemical Education Today
teacher might emphasize that more is happening than just water being heated from room temperature to its boiling point. The teacher might also ask if the beaker holding the water is being heated by the gas burner. By providing such guidance, the teacher can help students develop their own explanations instead of simply providing them. The intention of the SGDBLS approach is to encourage students to express their own views and reasons and to come to conclusions on the basis of facts rather than personal likes and dislikes. Productive classroom discussion cannot be achieved if students are not socialized and trained to listen and to be heard. Also, students should be able to recognize when it is imperative to work out a problem on their own and when it is appropriate to attack a problem by joining forces. In such a classroom, the teacher should be capable of conducting a dynamic discussion as well as being skilled in question-guiding techniques. All of this demands considerable skill, broad knowledge, and thorough understanding of the problem, and the ability to promptly adapt to the fast dynamics of the students' thinking processes. Often, alternative concepts will emerge during discussions. When this happens, the teacher must be able to recognize and to adopt those concepts into the classroom and let students speak pro et contra to discard what is wrong and to guide them to correct explanations. In order to implement this sort of approach in the classroom, teachers must rethink their syllabi to form an interwoven network from the first to the last lesson given. For such a chemistry course, experiments must be carefully chosen, possible observations thoroughly examined, guiding questions precisely and unambiguously prepared, and the range of student answers anticipated. Teachers must be well informed about the educational achievements (knowledge and competences) possessed by a typical student who will participate in the lesson. Only such actions will enable teachers to help students to successfully learn, connecting what they already know with what they are about to learn. Where Does Chemical Education in Croatia Stand Now? When we consider the efforts teachers must expend to create, organize, prepare, conduct, and clean up from the type of lesson described above, it becomes apparent that preparing for such a lesson is far more demanding when compared to the preparation needed for a conventional lecture class. Moreover, when SGDBLS is implemented in the classroom, it soon becomes obvious that the methods for assessing student progress and knowledge must also change.
r 2010 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
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It is crucial that the Croatian government and related institutions1 provide a sound and resource-rich inservice training program for its teachers. A series of workshops (more than 20 workshops for primary school chemistry teachers between July 2005 and October 2009) has been held in which teachers were trained on how to incorporate this teaching strategy into their chemistry lessons and how to teach in this way. Still, these efforts are not enough, particularly considering the fact that the process of upgrading chemistry education in Croatia should be continued and the learner-centered approach should be further implemented in chemistry classes at the secondary level of education. Unfortunately, considering all of Croatia's current social, political, and economic problems, at this point it is hard to predict the future of CNES in chemistry. Despite this uncertainty, there are positive developments. For example, Croatian chemical education experts are joining forces with the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry and foreign experts to set up a project that should impel further development of the inservice training program of chemistry teachers in Croatia. Chemical education will continue to change in Croatia; what is uncertain is exactly how its development will unfold. Note
1. Here, “related institutions” refers to the Ministry of Science, Education, and Sports; the Education and Teacher Training Agency; the National Centre for External Evaluation of Educational Achievements; and other Croatian institutions dealing with the education system.
Literature Cited 1. Republic of Croatia, Ministry of Science, Education, and Sports. Education Sector Development Plan 2005-2010; GIPA: Zagreb, Croatia, 2005; pp 11-19. 2. Republic of Croatia, Ministry of Science, Education, and Sports. Guide to the Croatian National Educational Standard for Primary Schools; Studio International: Zagreb, Croatia, 2005. 3. Guerrero, A. H. Research Miniprojects for Chemistry Teaching. In Conference Proceedings, VI International Conference on Chemical Education; University of Maryland: College Park, Maryland, 1981; p 201. 4. Vygotsky, L. S. Thought and Language; The MIT Press: Cambridge, 1985. 5. Ausubel, D. P. The Psychology of Meaningful Verbal Learning; Grune and Stratton: New York, 1963.
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