Chemistry as a Second Language: The Effect of Globalization on

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Chemistry as a Second Language: The Effect of Globalization on Chemical Education Charity Flener Lovitt*,1 and Paul Kelter2 1University

of North Texas, Department of Chemistry, 1508 W. Mulberry St., Denton, TX 76201 2Department of Teaching and Learning, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL 60115 *[email protected]

Collaborations between scientists often transcend borders and cultural differences. The fundamental nature of science allows scientists to communicate using knowledge of their field but the institutions that support them are often hindered by financial and cultural barriers. As a result, science suffers. This book evolved from an August 2009 symposium at the 238th annual meeting of the American Chemical Society in Washington, DC. Its focus is on chemistry students and professors interested in developing a global approach to teaching chemistry, by participating in an international exchange program or incorporating culturally inclusive techniques into their classroom. The book has three broad themes; education research with a globalized perspective, experiences of teaching and learning in different countries, and organizations that support a global view of chemical education and chemistry. Here are the authors and an overview of their stories.

Chemical Education Research Perspectives Liliana Mammino: Liliana Mammino is Professor of Chemistry at the University of Venda in a rural area of northeastern South Africa. Prof. Mammino is, in so many ways, a true Renaissance person of the rarest kind. Brought up in Italy, she spent many years in other countries, earning her Ph.D. in Russia at the University of Moscow and teaching in several countries in Africa before © 2010 American Chemical Society In Chemistry as a Second Language: Chemical Education in a Globalized Society; Flener Lovitt, C., et al.; ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2010.


eventually beginning her position at Venda, where she’s taught first-year and physical chemistry, and has done research in physical chemistry, for the past 13 years. Prof. Mammino’s experiences have given her an unusually broad view of the world, and her fluency in four languages gives her a special - perhaps unique - insight into the impact of the mother tongue of students and their ability to learn chemistry. Her chapter, a true work of scholarship on several levels, explores the limitations to learning when chemistry instruction is given in a language other than the mother tongue. Citing scores of examples from her own experience, as well as a wide range of references, Prof. Mammino diagnoses the student misconceptions that occur under these circumstances. Examples of student statements include, “The elements that are listed above are spontaneous, based on the observations.” “The entropy of the ice is a perfect crystal.” “The above two equation / chemical reactions can be utilized in a galvanic cell, since they can undergo the redox reaction.” “When T = 40 °C, the temperature is noticeable.” She considers homophones (“same sound” English words that are interchanged, thus unintentionally changing the meaning), incorrect subject/verb coupling, omission of key words, difficulties in the use of prepositions, expressing comparisons, and others. Language-based reluctance to participate in discussions is but one outcome of many that result from students being taught in a second language. Prof. Mammino makes a convincing case for teaching in the mother tongue while students are in their formative years of learning science, and teaching also in other languages (notably English, the current international language of science communication) when the student is ready. Liberato Cardellini: Professor Liberato Cardellini teaches and does research at Università Politecnica delle Marche in Ancona, Italy, looking out on the Adriatic Sea on the Eastern shore of the country. Some years ago, Prof. Cardellini began to reflect upon his teaching, deciding to become a better teacher by looking at the cognitive processes involved in teaching and learning. Engaging scholars worldwide, he learned about the nature of memory and its relationship to the traditional lecture, which he found to be a most unsatisfactory way of constructing knowledge. Rather, he found that the, “passive, non-thinking, information-receiving role” is unsuitable for learning. In this chapter, Prof. Cardellini considers the interaction between the inner mind and the outer way in which chemistry is, and can be, taught. He discusses the way experts think about a problem vs. the thinking of novices. He writes, “While the experts spend time in qualitative analysis of the problem, novices start with writing equations. Experts also tend to categorize the problem according to the laws of physics, while students categorize the problem according to some superficial entities and descriptions contained in the text of the problem. While the expert generates a physical representation of the problem, the novice often uses a process of direct syntactic translation.” He then focuses on problem- solving in chemistry, writing, “it has been shown that the possession of chemical knowledge and the knowledge of strategies and skills are not sufficient to solve a problem if confidence arising from previous experiences of successful problem-solving is missing.” He writes, “...the cognitive structures of good problem-solvers are more complex and contain more associations than those of poor problem-solvers. The strength of links among different concepts seems important in determining problem-solving 2 In Chemistry as a Second Language: Chemical Education in a Globalized Society; Flener Lovitt, C., et al.; ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2010.

behavior. It was also revealed that the deficiencies in the cognitive structures of poor problem-solvers appear predominantly for abstract concepts.” He then goes on to describe best practices in problem-solving, including cooperative learning groups and the impact of teacher-based attributes. His chapter ends by considering the impact of these teaching methods on his students in Italy.


Students Who Studied Abroad Markita Landry: Markita Landry is a well-traveled graduate student. As a child of a mixed cultural family, she understood the joys of international travel as she visited family in Bolivia at a very young age. “Cultural differences became apparent” for even a four-year old. She completed her undergraduate studies in chemistry and physics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she learned all about basketball. She then enrolled as a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she researches at the interface of chemistry, biology, and physics. While a graduate student at Illinois, Ms. Landry was selected as an East Asian Pacific Summer Institute Fellow to Japan and a US representative for the meeting of Nobel Laureates in Lindau, Germany. Her chapter discusses her experiences in the 10-week-long summer institute in Japan. The first third of her chapter is “A How-to Guide for the Aspiring Study Abroad Graduate Student,” in which she lists the steps that a graduate student must take in order to prepare for, and successfully complete, a study abroad. She then details how international experiences lead to increased scientific productivity, where she discovered that although the science may be universal, “the manner in which these scientific questions are taught, learned, and researched varies greatly from laboratory to laboratory, and varies even more so from culture to culture.” Her chapter closes with a discussion of the barriers that exist to cross-cultural exchange, in particular barriers “imposed on the scientific community by a country’s economic or political standings (that) can greatly stymie scientific progress.” Her experiences show that “multi-faceted problems require versatile solutions” and that international exchanges can be used to develop innovative research. Charity Flener-Lovitt: Dr. Flener-Lovitt recently completed her PhD studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Unlike the typical graduate student, localized into one field and one group, she spent her graduate career delocalized into chemical education, organometallic chemistry, and computational chemistry, which led to work in research groups in Illinois, Texas, Slovakia, and Germany. Dr. Flener-Lovitt first learned about chemistry abroad while spending the summer before graduate school working for a non-governmental organization (NGO) in Cambodia. The primary task of the NGO was teaching health and hygiene in rural Cambodian schools, but she jumped at the chance to use her chemistry background to test arsenic concentrations in local wells. She performed chemistry research in a primitive laboratory setting, where her labmates were chickens, dogs, and ants in a 5 foot tall ant hill. In graduate school, she earned the chance to research in Central Europe as a Central European Summer Research Institute Fellow. After spending one summer in Europe, she 3 In Chemistry as a Second Language: Chemical Education in a Globalized Society; Flener Lovitt, C., et al.; ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2010.


applied for and received a US State Department Fulbright Fellowship to Germany. In these settings, she learned that chemistry is a universal language. Her chapter details myths that prevent graduate students from traveling abroad and details the application process for short-term and long-term study abroad fellowships. She then discusses the impact of the study abroad on her graduate career on her professional and personal life. Her chapter ends with a list of tips for graduate students that may decide to apply for study abroad fellowships. LeighAnn Jordan: LeighAnn Jordan is currently a graduate student at Michigan State University. While she was undergraduate at Westminster College in Pennsylvania, she participated in a summer study abroad experience in Germany. Her experience there “opened [her] eyes to the international community” and helped her discover that “research is truly an international effort, and should not be separated by language barriers and/or country borders.” Her experience abroad helped confirm her choice to study biological chemistry with a basis in medicine, specifically so she could collaborate with professors in departments outside of chemistry and outside of the US. In addition to affirming her choice of career, her chapter discusses how her experience abroad led her to seek graduate schools away from home. Her chapter provides tips essential to undergraduates who may consider participating in a summer research experience outside of the United States.

Teaching in Diverse Cultures COL (Ret.). Patricia Dooley, PhD: Patricia Dooley is on the faculty of Bard College at Simon’s Rock in Massachusetts. This is, however, a second career for her. In her first career, she was a long-time member of the U.S. Army, rising to the rank of Colonel before retiring in 2008. While in the Army, COL (Ret.) Dooley served successfully in Asia, Europe and the United States. Her last overseas trip was to Afghanistan, where she served as a mentor and advisor to the National Military Academy of Afghanistan (NMAA) in the capital city of Kabul. Her experience helping to rebuild the University of Kabul’s chemistry program is the focus of her chapter. In her abstract, she describes the country as, “...reviving itself after 27 years of occupation, civil war, and governance by the Taliban, and still combating an insurgency...” Her stories of making something out of nearly nothing attest to the struggles to build an intellectual life. In her text, she describes the conditions there, “While not in written or spoken language, there is universality in a flooded chemistry laboratory floor—especially in a building with no running water, lights, or electricity... Kabul University had no chemicals to spare. Their laboratories had been plundered of everything: windowpanes, light fixtures, shelving, drawers, plumbing, electrical outlets. Seeing the great losses this institution had endured made the conditions at NMAA [National Military Academy of Afganistan] look luxurious in comparison.” Hers is a narrative of people working together across the barriers of geography, language, politics, and social customs to create the conditions for the people of Afghanistan to learn the international language - of chemistry. 4 In Chemistry as a Second Language: Chemical Education in a Globalized Society; Flener Lovitt, C., et al.; ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2010.


Profs. M. Carlos-Acuña and Paul Kelter: These two long-time friends and colleagues have worked together, most often at a distance of 2700 km, in the service of chemistry education for nearly 20 years. They met at an international conference, and saw so much common ground that it showed how similar seemingly distant cultures can be. About six years ago, Castro-Acuña and Kelter decided to start an organization of college and university teachers dedicated to supporting those who sought to improve the teaching of first-year chemistry worldwide. Since then, the International Center for First-Year Undergraduate Chemistry Education (ICUC) has been the vehicle for a vibrant level of collaboration among hundreds of first-year chemistry teachers throughout the world. The ICUC (pronounced “E-Cook” in Latin America), has run conferences, led symposia, fomented research, development and friendships via sabbaticals, and encouraged publications. In the chapter, several Iberoamerican ICUC members discuss the impact of the organization. Founding Board member José Miguel Abraham, a professor at the Universidad de San Luis in, Argentina, notes, “I have always taught that chemistry can contribute to the preservation and/or recovery of the environment in its natural, social and human aspects...To be involved with the ICUC since its beginnings is something that has given me a lot of satisfaction and the opportunity to increase my knowledge and to share my ideas with teachers from all around the world.” Amalia Torrealba, from the Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas. Dr. Torrealba notes, “The fortress of this association is the integration of a considerable number of teachers from several countries, which allow us to examine educational problems from different perspectives, and to generate ways to solve them.” The ICUC has also led many teachers to look in a deeper way than ever in their careers at their teaching philosophy and practice. This chapter describes the growth of the organization and the challenges (most notably financial) to its continued vitality.

Implications of the Globalization of Science Dr. Rolande Hodel: Rolande Hodel is the founder of AIDSfreeAFRICA, a non-profit organization that seeks to establish sustainable pharmaceutical drug production in Sub-Saharan Africa. She regularly travels between her home on the east coast of the US and Cameroon. Her chapter provides an interesting perspective on teaching science in developing countries. She details the need for training chemists in developing countries so life-saving drugs can be developed in-country. Globalization of science has lowered the barrier to drug production, but the lack of training and resources prevent medical start-ups from succeeding in developing countries. Her chapter provides compelling reasons for US scientists to become more active in training and learning more about science in developing countries.

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Organizations That Fund Study and Teaching Abroad * * * *


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Humboldt Foundation Fellowships (Germany) http://www.humboldt-foundation.de/web/start.html The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) http://www.daad.org/ Institute of International Education www.iie.org Whitaker International Scholars Program http://www.whitakerawards.org/ Kaust Discovery Scholarships (Saudi Arabia) http://www.kaust.edu.sa/ Fulbright Fellowships http://www.iie.org/fulbright/ (Students) http://www.cies.org/ (Professors and Professionals) US National Science Foundation - Developing Global Scientists and Engineers http://www.nsf.gov/funding/ pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=12831&org=OISE&from=home

We would like to thank the Division of Chemical Education of the American Chemical Society for the opportunity to organize the symposium and ACS books for the invitation to prepare this book. We are grateful for the contributions for our distinguished authors and for their insight into science education beyond US borders.

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Chemistry as a Second Language: The Effect of Globalization on

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