Advice to My Intellectual Grandchildren - Journal of Chemical

Chemical Education Today

Award Address

Advice to My Intellectual Grandchildren1 by J. Dudley Herron

Chemistry educators work within two cultures. Chemical educators live in “The Two Cultures” of science and humanities that C. P. Snow described in 1959 (1), and they must communicate with residents in both. It’s a tough job, but whining, which is sometimes heard, won’t make it better. Generating new knowledge that colleagues can apply to improve chemistry instruction will. That is our job; to do it well we must draw from scholarship in sociology, psychology, and education as well as chemistry. The gulf between science and humanities that Snow described almost 50 years ago may have narrowed, but it has not disappeared. Chemistry educators, who draw from both areas, are inevitably misunderstood in one culture or the other; like everyone else, they are occasionally subjected to criticism. Accept it. Learn from it. But above all: Know who you are, and be true to yourself. I needed a job when I interviewed at Purdue, but I also needed to be me rather than someone a Purdue chemist thought I should be. Unless the job allowed me to address questions that I deemed important, I couldn’t take it. When, after describing my doctoral research, I retired from the room, I knew I wouldn’t be hired; but I was. Too often young people are anxious to be accepted and try to force themselves into someone else’s mold. It seldom works. They fear that if they don’t become what others think they should be, they will be banished to the hinterlands where there is no opportunity to prosper, and that’s usually not the case, either. I know from experience, as do several of my better doctoral students, that institutions that many colleagues view as “hinterlands” may afford better opportunities to contribute to chemistry education than do more prestigious universities where there isn’t a good fit. Happiness and professional advancement have far more to do with finding the right fit than they do with landing at one of U.S. News and World Report’s top 20 universities. 24

Figure 1. Tom Greenbowe (left) presented an award plaque to J. Dudley Herron at the 2007 ACS Spring National Meeting, held in Chicago in March 2007.

Having said this, when you think there is an opportunity to do something worthwhile, be willing to bend a little to make it possible. When I interviewed at Purdue, I was bothered that no faculty in the Department of Education seemed to be involved in selecting a faculty member for what was clearly a teachertraining position. But ever since I started teaching high school chemistry in 1958, I had argued that science teacher preparation would never improve until science departments saw it as their job as much as the job of schools of education. At Purdue it was, at least on paper, so it was time to quit complaining and go to work! I had to work hard to learn how to live with hard-nosed research chemists and still stay in touch with my more tenderhearted colleagues in education. I had to work even harder to think of myself as a chemist, but I did, and I think that Purdue’s current Division of Chemical Education and the growth of chemistry education research elsewhere suggest it was worth the effort. Opt for Substance over Show It is an imperfect world in which rewards do not always go to those most worthy, present case included. No matter what scheme we use to evaluate and reward achievement, be it classroom grading, university promotion, or international awards, there are inevitable temptations to make ourselves appear more worthy than we are. Classroom teachers whose merit is judged by student evaluations or performance on tests may pander or teach to the test. In order to convince colleagues that they are worthy of tenure and promotion, young faculty may publish trivia (or at least attempt to), lest they perish. Puffery can prove irresistible, and material of dubious value permeates the Internet and swells journals. Don’t add to it on purpose. Even when you try to make substantive contributions, you will occasionally write or say something stupid. Peer review can sometimes save us, but reviewers can be wrong or careless or both. Pay attention to the suggestions of reviewers and readers, and accept their sound suggestions. But when, after careful consideration, you still feel you are on solid ground, have the courage to hold firm. Remain fixed on the goal of all scholarly publication: clear, useful communication.

Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 85 No. 1 January 2008 • www.JCE.DivCHED.org • © Division of Chemical Education

photo by Morton Z. Hoffman

After I had described my doctoral research to chemistry faculty at Purdue as part of my job interview, the first question was, “You call that research!?” The question didn’t bother me, because I knew that it was far from the research that chemists were doing. As I explained, “I know it isn’t what you call research. Call it a study, a survey, or whatever you like, but know that this is the kind of question that interests me, and it is the kind of work I expect to do. If you don’t want somebody in your department doing this sort of thing, you shouldn’t hire me.” A great deal has changed since that interview in 1965. There exist, at Purdue and at several other institutions, thriving doctoral programs that prepare chemists to do research on teaching and learning chemistry. The inauguration of this award is testimony to growing respect for the field, and my selection as its first recipient indicates that some believe my contributions mattered. That possibility emboldens me to offer advice to my intellectual grandchildren. I begin with this observation:


© Division of Chemical Education • www.JCE.DivCHED.org • Vol. 85 No. 1 January 2008 • Journal of Chemical Education

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Award Address My list of publications is not long, compared to that of many colleagues, and the reputation that this award recognizes is based largely on an article containing little that originated with me (2). Eric Scerri (3) described Piaget for Chemists (2) as the “much-cited article that is now regarded as the manifesto for chemical constructivism” (4), and it clearly struck a responsive chord among chemistry teachers. That article demonstrates another point that grandchildren should keep in mind: Communicating other people’s research to a new audience may contribute more than what you do on your own. Although some of the research reported in Piaget for Chemists was done by my students, most had appeared in the psychology and education literature two to 14 years earlier. Many people had seen in Piaget’s work a plausible explanation for common difficulties experienced by students; all that was left for me to do was bring it to the attention of chemists. My point is this: What many see as my greatest contribution to research in chemistry education wasn’t original on my part. I simply showed how someone else’s work might explain perplexing problems encountered in teaching chemistry. Unfortunately, many readers didn’t draw reasonable inferences, and in subsequent articles and speeches I tried, often in vain, to clarify what Piaget’s theory could and could not explain about failures to learn chemistry. Keep in mind that: Communicating results in understandable language is as important as the research. Piaget for Chemists can be cited on both sides of this point. The popularity of the article is testimony that it communicated to experienced chemistry teachers insights generated by Piaget and others in a manner that they could identify with and understand. But the fact that it is still misunderstood by readers such as Scerri indicates how difficult communication is. Why is this so? I believe that the constructivist view of learning provides the most likely explanation. Constructivism The essential message of constructivism is self-evident: All knowledge is constructed in the mind of the learner. If one simply stops to think, the physical impossibility of transmitting an idea, intact, from one brain to another is transparent. There is no conduit. All that I can do is perturb the environment around me. I can create compressions and rarefactions in air called “sound”. I can wave my arms and gesticulate in other ways to affect the reflection of light from my body (or, as I am doing now, cause black ink to be deposited on white paper to the same end). But neither action transmits ideas from my head to yours. In order for that to happen, the perturbations I create must come within range of your sense receptors, your receptors must convert those perturbations into signals that are transmitted to your brain, the signals must trigger a response there, and that response must be such that the “memory” implanted in your grey matter is essentially the same as the one encoded in mine. It is a complex

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and, as yet, poorly understood process during which much can, and does, go wrong. This fundamental idea of constructivism is simple and easily accepted; it is when one considers implications that it becomes problematic. For example, even though I know the impossibility of transmitting ideas from my head to yours, I act as though I can, ignoring the conditions that must pertain if you are to construct in your head a reasonable facsimile of what resides in mine. Some of my expectations may be so reasonable that they aren’t worth mentioning: That you can read, that English is your native language, that your working vocabulary is comparable to mine, that you are sufficiently interested to attend to the words before you, that you do not suffer any abnormality that would interfere. But other conditions are more subtle and difficult to anticipate. Chemists acquainted with the research and job interview procedures common in university chemistry departments will surely comprehend the essence of my introductory paragraph, but others may not. And certain nuances of remarks under the admonition to “opt for substance over show” will be more apparent to college faculty who participate in tenure and promotion reviews whereas others may be more transparent to chemists teaching in secondary schools where accountability testing is in vogue. Still more problematic are the patterns of thought that are so endemic to our reasoning that they occur subconsciously to confound what we learn. This point is critically important, yet difficult to grasp. One of the following anecdotes may provide a bridge to understanding for readers who are unfamiliar with constructivism. In 2003 Scerri (3), a philosopher of chemistry, argued that chemistry educators’ misuse of the term constructivism gives undue comfort to social constructivists who argue that “the laws of nature as we know them are social constructs—essentially laws that scientists have agreed between themselves and do not have any fundamental significance” (5). “Or as other authors have expressed it,” Scerri continues, “constructivists believe that it is not Nature but the scientific community itself that selects among possible laws of nature” (6). If, in using constructivism, chemical educators were suggesting that the laws of science are merely social constructs and arbitrary, Scerri’s concerns would be well founded. But as Bernal (7) has pointed out, it is not the philosopher’s social constructivism that guides research in chemistry education, but the psychological (or pedagogical) constructivism as developed by such cognitive scientists as Jean Piaget (8–10) and Lev Vygotsky (11–12), along with the work of John Dewey (13–14), Jerome Bruner (15–16), and others that undergirds their research. Understanding that, most of the confusion that concerned Scerri vanishes. But Scerri’s article is instructive in the way that his understanding of constructivism, derived from his work in philosophy, shaped his (mis)understanding of the chemistry education literature cited in his article. Scerri is clearly aware that knowledge cannot be transmitted, intact, from one person to another. He comments in his response to a letter concerning his article: “[N]o educator seri-




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Award Address ously believes, or claims, that knowledge is transmitted intact to the mind of the learner” (17). But that understanding does not prevent his (philosopher’s) understanding of constructivism to distort interpretation of articles discussing constructivism as it pertains to teaching and learning. Because the signals we receive through our ears, eyes, and other sense receptors are necessarily processed by our brains under the guidance of existing mental constructs—declarative knowledge, attitudes, reasoning patterns, intellectual habits, and the like—each of us is highly susceptible to misunderstanding what we are “taught.” It is implications of this kind that have made constructivism a powerful influence on chemistry education. It is virtually impossible for anyone to recognize how existing cognitive structures are influencing what they learn, so Scerri’s misinterpretation of articles he cites is easily excused. More serious is his failure to appreciate how ineffective expository teaching is at overcoming this kind of misunderstanding. Eckstrom, an engineer who returned to college for teacher certification, wrote about his rejection of the constructivist ideas presented in courses he was taking, and his later embracing of those ideas after teaching for several years (18). Scerri comments that “Perhaps it would not be necessary for educators like Eckstrom to experience such an arduous journey … if authors of journal articles on the subject would present a more sophisticated set of arguments in its favor” (19, my emphasis). Scerri’s position is a common one: Students don’t understand? Then refine your lecture; sharpen your arguments. Unfortunately, the sophistication of our arguments is, all too often, not the problem, as illustrated by a second anecdote. The arguments in support of Piaget’s theory of intellectual development found in Flavel’s 1963 book (20), through which my fellow graduate students and I were introduced to constructivist ideas, are sophisticated and well crafted, but they didn’t convince any of us! (Notice, also, Eckstrom’s report that he rejected constructivist ideas when they were presented in class, presumably through lectures and readings.) Piaget’s claims about student responses to his tasks were absurd! For example, when children at age 5–6 are shown balls of modeling clay and asked to pick out two balls with the same amount, one for the child and one for the examiner, they do so without hesitation. But when the examiner rolls one ball into a sausage and asks, “Now is there more clay in your ball, in my sausage, or is the amount the same in both?” Piaget claims that children at this age no longer believe that there is the same amount. They typically reply, “The sausage has more,” or, “The ball has more.” Reluctant to call Piaget a fraud, my fellow graduate students and I suggested that children just don’t understand what is meant by “more” in this context. To prove our point, I presented the task to my 6-year-old son. After getting his confident “the sausage has more” answer, I followed Piaget’s advice and asked, “Suppose that instead of clay, the ball and sausage were chocolate candy. Which would you rather have?” “Yours (the sausage),” came his unhesitating reply. “Why?” I asked. With wide eyes and obvious irritation at my stupidity, James vehemently replied, “Because there’s more, Dad!” That was the moment I became a believer.

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I have tried all sorts of “sophisticated arguments” (and supported them with anecdotes such as these) to convey to chemists the significance of constructivist views of learning, but I had little success until Sue Nurrenbern introduced me to the “Water and Wine Problem” (21), the subject of a third anecdote. Sue was reading Review of Educational Research when I returned from lunch, and she asked me to look at a problem presented in the article (22). It went something like what appears in Figure 2. After I solved the problem and Sue insisted that I had gotten it wrong, I did what any self-respecting scholar might do. I sat down to write an angry letter to the editors who allowed such an obvious error slip into a respected journal. To do that I had to work through the problem carefully so that the source of the error would be clear, and after just a few minutes at that exercise I was forced to admit, “The fool psychologist got it right; I got it wrong!” It was the kind of sobering realization that sophisticated arguments seldom produce. So why had I (and most others who consider the problem) gotten it wrong? Equally important, what kind of experience led to the truth? These are the questions that (psychological) constructivism helped me explore. After analyzing my experience, I developed my most effective talk, ever. It led audience members to repeat my embarrassing experience of getting this “simple” problem wrong, followed by a variety of “sophisticated proofs” of the correct answer, all of which audience members refuse to accept, and finally an opportunity to “convince yourself either that C is the correct answer or prove to me that it is not”. Only then, through a discussion of how our existing cognitive structures so easily lead all of us, beginning students and Ph.D. chemists alike, to err and what processes we commonly use to sort out truth, did I gain many followers among chemists who are unfamiliar with chemistry education research (23). There now exists a vast body of research based on a constructivist view of learning; for example, all of the research based on Piaget’s stage theory, research on student misconceptions, and research on cooperative learning, are grounded in constructivism. It has been a useful guide, but it is not the final word. Before moving to my next word of advice, I wish to see if I can bring clarity to a somewhat contentious aspect of constructivism. Since knowledge is constructed within our own brains, it follows that all of our understanding of the world is constructed inside our heads. That being the case, what is wrong with social constructivists’ claims that laws of nature “discovered” through science are, in fact, just arbitrary social constructs? Because all knowledge is constructed in our heads, it is true that scientists do not discover laws of nature in the same way that one might discover a lost coin or a mineral deposit. Those laws do not exist in nature. They are not even what Piaget calls physical knowledge such as size, color, texture, and the like that is gained directly through our senses as we interact with Nature. Rather, “laws of nature” are what Piaget called logicomathematical knowledge. It is abstracted knowledge about relationships that are independent of the objects themselves.



1 teaspoon 1 teaspoon 1

2

water

wine

Figure. A glass of water and a glass of wine.

You have a glass of water and a glass of wine (see figure above). Assume that both are pure, homogeneous substances. (If it helps, consider the wine to be pure ethanol.)

1. Transfer one teaspoon of water to the glass of wine and mix thoroughly.

2. Transfer one teaspoon of this contaminated wine to the water. Now both the water and the wine are contaminated. Now consider the amount of contaminant in each container and choose one of the following:

A. The amount (volume) of water contaminating the wine is greater than the amount (volume) of wine contaminating the water.

B. The amount (volume) of wine contaminating the water is greater than the amount (volume) of water contaminating the wine.

C. The amount (volume) of water contaminating the wine is equal to the amount (volume) of wine contaminating the water. This will mean more if you solve the problem yourself before reading on.

Figure 2. The water and wine problem as typically presented. Redrawn and adapted from ref 22.

Whether or not an apple played a role in Newton’s formulation of the law of gravity, that law does not describe apples or any other objects found in Nature. It is not physical knowledge about Nature. Rather, it describes a relationship pertaining to all objects and abstracted as a result of interactions among many objects. Newton did not “discover” it in nature; it does not exist there. Rather, he constructed the idea in his head as a result of his interactions with nature. The law of gravity is logicomathematical knowledge abstracted from experience. But it is abstracted from experience. Nature constrains us. Knowledge is constructed, but it is not just a construction. Learning involves the interaction between our existing schemas and sensory perception.

This discussion of Nature and sensory perception of it places us in contact with another contentious claim: There is no such thing as an external reality; it’s all in our head. When I was finishing The Chemistry Classroom, there were enough radical constructivists, as such claimants were then called, among science and math educators that I included a section on “The Question of Reality” in my discussion of constructivism (24). Those three pages were difficult to write, and I spent many hours working on them. Although I could appreciate the radical constructivists’ point concerning the non-existence of an objective, external reality, the radical constructivists I knew seemed to “know” it is there. They certainly behaved as though it is there! In an effort to avoid arguments with friends without complicating my discussion of constructivism, I settled on a couple of rules about how I would separate reality from mental construction of that reality and argued: If we are to understand learning, the only viable position to take is that an external reality exists, even though the understanding of it may differ from one person to another and from one point in time to the next (25). We do not value astronomy over astrology because the one set of ideas is constructed and the other is not. Both sets are constructed. But one set provides more consistent agreement with perceptions of our environment than does the other. Ignoring the essential role played by external stimuli in learning is just as fatal as ignoring the essential role played by existing mental schemas as knowledge is constructed. Don’t Neglect the Development of Theory When chemistry educators describe themselves as “constructivists”, most imply that instruction must focus on learners and what they bring to the learning environment rather than on teachers and what they bring; that novice learners have conceptions that differ markedly from those of expert chemists; that those naive conceptions are robust and influence what is learned; and that differences between the novice and expert conceptions may go undetected by both. That instructors need strategies to reveal student conceptions (or misconceptions) and need strategies to bridge the gap between the naive conceptions brought to the instructional setting and those accepted as mature science. These generalizations undergirded by constructivism differ from those derived from other theoretical perspectives, and chemistry education researchers must scrutinize constructivism and competing theories to construct theory capable of rationalizing what we observe to be true about teaching and learning chemistry. If constructivism is to be that guide, it must allow us to make testable predictions about teaching and learning, and I fear we haven’t done much of that. One notable exception is the work of Michael Abraham and John Renner (26–27) in building a high school chemistry course around carefully constructed learning cycles. (I am insufficiently familiar with POGIL (28) to judge, but what I know about that project suggests that it may represent another exception.)


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Award Address In 1979 I gave a talk in which I argued for the resurrection of combining power and the use of that concept during the early stages of chemistry instruction to rationalize the law of definite proportions, formula writing, and other tools needed early in the course (29), obviating the need for atomic theory, which we tend to introduce in all of its glory, straight out of the box. My understanding of how knowledge is constructed and how facility with logical operations builds, one scheme upon another, predicted that deferring atomic theory until after one understood empirical facts about chemical combination should enhance understanding of chemistry as a whole. Chemists at the meeting were far more concerned about presenting mature science as it is currently understood by scientists than in presenting it in a manner that beginners might understand, so nobody took me seriously. I saw no simple way to test the prediction, so it ended there, and I’m sorry. Until we hold theories about teaching and learning chemistry that compel us to make and test predictions of this kind, chemistry education hasn’t fully matured as a science, and many chemists will continue to ignore our contributions. Testing predictions derived from constructivism is but one way to strengthen the theory. As knowledge expands, new theories inevitably emerge, and it is important to consider whether these new frameworks are more potent than ones in current use. About the same time that Piaget’s work captured the attention of Robert Karplus and Arnold Arons, other science educators—notably Joseph Novak, then at Purdue and later at Cornell—became enamored by David Ausubel’s theory of meaningful verbal learning (30). The two theoretical frameworks shared common threads, and both had much to recommend them. There were, however, significant differences in implications of the two theories for science instruction. For example, when I went to Purdue, Novak, guided primarily by Ausubel’s work, was developing audio-tutorial lessons to teach atomic structure to primary school children, an enterprise that I insisted was doomed to failure, firmly convinced that Piaget’s stage theory accurately describes how intelligence necessarily develops in children. Over the years Joe and I had friendly, but serious, disagreements about how learning takes place. Those disagreements culminated in a paper (31) that I had forgotten about until Stacey Lowery Bretz mentioned it at the awards symposium where the oral version of this paper was presented. I wrote the 1978 paper (31) because Novak persistently advised researchers to abandon Piaget’s theory as a guide to research in favor of Ausubel’s, and it was bad advice. Neither theory was capable of explaining all of the problems we needed to address. I suspect that is true today. Although I am flattered that so many chemistry educators view themselves as constructivists and trace their constructivist beliefs back to Piaget for Chemists, it is folly to believe that constructivism, as it is presently conceived, is the quintessential guide to teaching and learning chemistry. Theory is important, and you should attend to it carefully, but it is not all important: Not all useful research is related to theory. Having made the point about the importance of theory, I need to balance the scale. 30

In the late 1980s Lee Shulman (32–33) developed the construct of “pedagogical content knowledge (PCK)”, giving a name to knowledge that experienced teachers knew was critical to effective teaching. It is content knowledge, but it is content knowledge related to teaching and it isn’t well understood by chemists who have never taught. Chemistry educators need to address, empirically where possible, questions about sequencing of topics; examine the relative effectiveness of various systems as examples of equilibrium and other topics; determine what analogies serve to clarify a concept rather than muddle it; and characterize chemistry content in a manner that facilitates teaching and learning. Knowledge of this kind, which is seldom recognized and deliberately taught in teacher education programs (34), constitutes much of what distinguishes experienced teachers from neophytes. Mulhall, Berry, and Loughran (35) describe two different, but complementary, formats to represent successful science teachers’ PCK. The example they give for the topic of chemical reactions outlines, in an easily understood manner, a rich collection of knowledge that would be especially valuable to any beginning chemistry teacher. Whether their suggested formats represent the best vehicles for sharing PCK is a matter for further research. When I started this section I thought of the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics (36) as an analog for a PCK compendium, and that dates me. The Journal of Chemical Education Learning Communities Online is the more appropriate model today. The needed database would contain far more than the instructional modules that are featured there, but the requirements that “submissions are peer reviewed… [and] must give evidence of successful use with students, provide detailed instructions for users, be original, and meet definite instructional goals” (37) are all appropriate. What should a PCK database contain? Certainly information such as the Chemical Laboratory Information Profiles (CLIPs) prepared by Jay Young and published in this Journal belong. Near the top of my list would be chemistry content, characterized in a way that facilitates the development and testing of instructional modules. What that characterization should look like is unclear; the only format I have explored is concept analysis. In the mid-1970s I used materials developed by Smoke in 1932 (38) to illustrate differences between “discovery” and “expository” learning for prospective math and science teachers. That ill-advised exercise led to a couple of studies and many hours of concept analysis by my graduate students and me (39–40). That work convinced me that a taxonomy of chemistry concepts accompanied by formal analyses of representative concepts would be an invaluable resource for teachers, but our exploratory work has never been followed up. There continues to be research on common misconceptions, and a compendium of those surely belong in a PCK database. Similarly, knowledge gleaned from research on effective strategies for moving students from common misconceptions, or as some prefer to call them, “naive conceptions”, to those accepted by mature scientists belong there (41–44). My point is that there is a great deal of important knowledge that can be contributed by chemists who are gifted teach-



ers but who have little knowledge or interest in psychological theories like constructivism. But to be of value as research, that knowledge must be shared in a public forum where it can be examined, tested, and modified by others. When, in 1994, the ACS Division of Chemical Education’s Task Force on Chemical Education Research prepared its statement about scholarship in the field (45), it tried to help promotions committees differentiate serious scholarship of teaching that should be rewarded from papers about teaching that are not: Research involves data collection. It does not always involve numbers, but it does involve data. In the review of J. Am. Chem. Soc. we classified 16% of the articles as synthesis and characterization of compounds, some of which were originally formed by accident. Does such serendipitous synthesis of a compound constitute research? We think not, but when a chemist reconstructs the conditions that produced the compound, carefully noting factors such as temperature, amount of light, presence of other materials, and whatever else might have affected the outcome of the reaction, it is research. Now there are data, which others can use to verify the result and repeat the experiment. Consider an analogous case in chemistry education, one that could be planned or accidental: A lesson on entropy is presented and, even though it is their first exposure to the subject, students understand the concept. Both teacher and colleagues would be ecstatic at such an occurrence, but would they call it research? Probably not, regardless of how often this teacher could repeat the lesson. However, when the chemistry educator reconstructs the conditions that led to success, carefully noting factors such as how the topic was introduced, the sequencing of ideas, students’ attitudes, the nature of interactions among students and between students and teacher, the experiments or demonstrations used, and the sequence of events in the lesson, that is research. Now there are data, which others can use to verify the result and repeat the lesson (45).

Conclusion Since Piaget for Chemists appeared 30 years ago, (psychological) constructivism has acquired a level of usefulness in chemistry education that inevitably results in misunderstanding, distortion, and confusion. Constructivism, as used in chemistry education, labels a network of ideas about teaching and learning that are as complex as those connoted by “entropy” in physical chemistry, and few chemists, other than those who label themselves “chemical educators” will devote the time and energy required to tease out the nuances within that network of ideas. Given legitimate priorities of other chemists, it simply isn’t worth their effort. In an effort to be of service to other chemists who teach, but who do not see teaching and learning chemistry as their primary area of scholarship, chemical educators sometimes write and talk about constructivism in general terms, just as a physical chemist may write or talk about entropy as “randomness” when

…there is a great deal of important knowledge that can be contributed by chemists who are gifted teachers but who have little knowledge or interest in psychological theories like constructivism.

addressing non-specialists. The confusion that results from such imprecise use of language is unfortunate, but it may be unavoidable. Still, all would be well advised to speak as plainly and clearly as they can. Toward that end, I commend to you Jack Renner’s paper, The Power of Purpose, (46). Through his careful contrast of “Theory A” and “Theory B”, he clarifies important distinctions between science as it is commonly taught and science as constructivists believe it should be taught. He does it, I believe, without ever using “constructivism” or any of the other terms that researchers in science education have borrowed from psychology or other disciplines. It is an excellent example for those who live and work in both of Snow’s Two Cultures, applying knowledge generated by psychologists and social scientists to problems of teaching and learning chemistry and communicating the results to chemists living well inside the world of science. Perhaps Renner’s example will prompt some of my intellectual grandchildren to produce equally powerful presentations of the “big ideas” derived from their research without using terms that confuse other chemists with whom they work. When they do that, they will certainly need no further advice from me! Acknowledgment I wish to thank Peter Mahaffy, professor of chemistry at The King’s University College, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and chair, IUPAC Committee on Chemistry Education, for his insightful suggestions for revision of the original manuscript. His contributions went far beyond a reviewer’s obligation. Note 1. This paper is adapted from the award address for the ACS Award for Achievement in Research for the Teaching and Learning of Chemistry. It was presented on March 26, 2007, at a symposium sponsored by the Division of Chemical Education at the Spring 2007 National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, in Chicago, IL.

Literature Cited 1. Snow, C. P. The Two Cultures and The Scientific Revolution; Cambridge University Press: New York, 1959. 2. Herron, J. D. J. Chem. Educ. 1975, 52, 146–150. 3. Scerri, E. J. Chem. Educ. 2003, 80, 468–474. 4. Scerri, E. J. Chem. Educ. 2003, 80, 468. 5. Collins, H. In The One Culture?; Collins, H.; Labinger, J., Eds.; University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 2001, pp 184–195. Quoted in Ref 3, p 469.


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photo by J. W. Moore

Award Address

Figure 3. Dudley Herron (5th from left) at the conclusion of the symposium in his honor, shown with, from left, Sue Nurrenbern (in back), Tom Greenbowe, Stacey Lowery Bretz, Charles (Dick) Ward, George Bodner, Dorothy Gabel, Mike Abraham, David Frank, and Jimmy Reeves. Nurrenbern, Greenbowe, Ward, Gabel, and Frank did their graduate work with Herron.

6. Scerri, E. J. Chem. Educ. 2003, 80, 469. 7. Bernal, P. J. Chem. Educ. 2006, 83, 324–326. 8. Piaget, J. The Psychology of the Child; Basic Books: New York, 1972. 9. Piaget, J. The Child’s Conception of the World; Littlefield Adams: New York, 1990. 10. Piaget, J.; Gruber, H. (Ed.); Voneche, J. J. (Ed.). The Essential Piaget (100th Anniversary ed.); Jason Aronson: New York, 1976. 11. Vygotsky, L. Thought and Language (A. Kozulin, Trans.); MIT Press: Boston, 1986. (Original work published 1934.) 12. Vygotsky, L.; Vygotsky, S. Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes; Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 1980. 13. Dewey, J. Experience and Education; MacMillan: New York, 1997. 14. Dewey, J. How We Think; Dover: New York, 1997. 15. Bruner, J. Studies in Cognitive Growth: A Collaboration at the Center for Cognitive Studies; Wiley & Sons: New York, 1966. 16. Bruner, J. Toward a Theory of Instruction; Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 1974. 17. Scerri, E. J. Chem. Educ. 2004, 81, 194. 18. Eckstrom, D. J. Chem. Educ. 2004, 81, 194–195. 19. Scerri, E. J. Chem. Educ. 2004, 81, 195. 20. Flavell, J. H. The Developmental Psychology of Jean Piaget; Van Nostrand Reinhold: New York, 1963. 21. Case, R. Rev. Educ. Res. 1975, 45, 59–87. 22. The version of the problem shown in Figure 2 is redrawn and adapted from Herron, J. D. The Chemistry Classroom: Formulas for Successful Teaching; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1996, pp 205–206. 23. For further discussion see ref 22, p 207.

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24. Herron, J. D. The Chemistry Classroom: Formulas for Successful Teaching; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1996, pp 46–49. 25. Herron, J. D. The Chemistry Classroom: Formulas for Successful Teaching; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1996, p 47. 26. Renner, J.; Stafford, D.; Lawson, A.; McKinnon, J.; Friot, E.; Kellogg, D. Research, Teaching, and Learning with the Piaget Model; University of Oklahoma Press: Norman, OK, 1976. 27. Abraham, M.; Renner, J. J. Res. in Sci. Tch. 1985, 22, 121–143. 28. Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning. http://www.pogil.org (accessed Sep 2007). 29. Herron, J. D. Combining Power: A Ghost from the Past. Paper presented at the Great Lakes Regional ACS Meeting, Rockford, IL, June 4, 1979. 30. Ausubel, D. The Psychology of Meaningful Verbal Learning; Grune and Stratton: New York, 1963. 31. Herron, J. D. Science Education 1978, 62, 593–605. 32. Shulman, L. S. Educ. Res. 1986, 15, 4–14. 33. Shulman, L. S. Harvard Educ. Rev. 1987, 57, 1–22. 34. Herron, J. D. On Some of My Biases. This unpublished paper prepared for chemistry teaching majors at Purdue University, February, 1978, represents an exception. 35. Mulhall, P.; Berry, A.; Loughran, J. Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching 2003, 4, Article 2. 36. CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics; CRC Press: Boca Raton (published yearly). 37. JCE Learning Communities Online. http://www.JCE.DivCHED. org/JCEDLib/LrnCom/index.html (accessed Sep 2007). 38. Smoke, K. L. Psychological Monographs 1932, 42, 38. 39. Herron, J. D.; Agbebi, E.; Cottrell, L.; Sills, T. Science Education 1976, 60, 375–388. 40. Herron, J. D.; Cantu, L. L.; Ward, R.; Srinivasan, V. Science Education 1977, 61, 185–199. 41. Clement, J. J. Res. in Sci. Tch. 1993, 30, 1241–1257. 42. Clement, J. Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society; Erlbaum: Mahwah, NJ, 2004. 43. Savinainen, A.; Scott, P.; Viiri, J. Science Education 2005, 89, 175–195. 44. Teichert, M.; Stacy, A. J. Res. in Sci. Tch. 2002, 39, 464–496. 45. Task Force on Chemical Education Research. J. Chem. Educ. 1994, 71, 850–852. 46. Renner, J. Science Education 1982, 66, 709–716.

Supporting JCE Online Material

http://www.jce.divched.org/Journal/Issues/2008/Jan/abs24.html Abstract and keywords Full text (PDF) with links to cited URLs and JCE articles

J. Dudley Herron is an emeritus member of the Department of Physical Sciences, Morehead State University, Morehead, KY; [email protected].


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