Chemical Education Today
Association Report: SOCED
The Changing Landscape of Teaching High School Chemistry by Kristin D. Collins and Terri Taylor
High school chemistry teachers have faced a number of changes in their classrooms in recent years. Technology has impacted the way chemistry laboratories are equipped. Teachers have students who are learning English and the language of chemistry simultaneously. The enactment of No Child Left Behind has placed an emphasis on assessment, requiring teachers to develop new protocols to assess their students in line with state and national standards. In response to these changes, the American Chemical Society has published a second edition of Chemistry in the National Science Education Standards (CNSES), a resource that provides updated models for meaningful learning in the high school chemistry classroom (1). “Nobody could have foreseen with the 1996 edition of the Standards how different a chemistry classroom could become”, states Stacey Lowery Bretz, the book’s editor. The National Science Education Standards (NSES) (2) were published by the National Research Council in 1996 to address the goal of science literacy for all students. The NSES document provides content standards that indicate learning goals for K–12 students; teaching standards that offer guidelines for effective instruction and curricula and emphasize what students should know; and system standards that indicate the support that school systems must provide to ensure the success of these teachers and their students. In 1997, the American Chemical Society commissioned the first edition of CNSES (3) to provide insight and perspective on the implementation of these standards in the high school chemistry classroom and their potential impact on the education of pre-service high school chemistry teachers. The second edition of CNSES responds to the 1996 National Science Education Standards through the lens of the current and rapidly changing landscape of high school chemistry instruction. Consequently, all chapters have been updated and new chapters have been added to reflect the new realities of high school chemistry teaching and learning. High School and College Collaboration Bretz notes that each chapter has been co-authored by a high school chemistry teacher and a college or university chemistry professor. “I wanted [the book] to have an authentic voice,” Bretz said of the rationale for the high school and college/university collaboration. She contacted colleagues at various institutions of higher education and scientific societies to contribute chapters to the text. These educators selected a high school chemistry teacher with whom to work in developing each chapter. As a result of this collaborative effort, the practical examples and applications presented have already been vetted in a high school chemistry classroom. Continuing Themes Chapter 1, Thinking About Standards, notes that the basic questions asked in the chemistry classroom have remained
largely unchanged over the past 200 years:
• What should students know, understand, and be able to do?
• How will they get there?
• How will we know if they actually attained these goals?
The authors note that, while standards provide a framework for addressing these questions, it is up to the schools to determine how to reach the desired learning goals. The authors challenge teachers and administrators to weigh various strategies, suggestions, and examples—some of which are found in the text—to determine how their individual schools and school districts will carry out this task. Chapter 2, Why Chemistry?, addresses this question by making connections between the discipline and its impact on daily life. Two chapters, Chemistry and the Life Science Standards (chapter 5) and Earth System Science Topics in the News: How Teachers Can Use These Contexts To Teach Chemistry and Inquiry (chapter 6), focus on the links between chemistry and other disciplines. Many of the life science standards incorporate chemistry concepts: using biological examples to illustrate chemistry concepts reinforces both physical and life science standards. Similarly, news stories on volcanic eruptions and hurricanes can serve as a platform for introducing chemistry concepts and for connecting earth and physical science standards. In chapter 9, Content Standards for the History and Nature of Science, the book highlights the very important intersections between chemistry, history, and the nature of science and provides practical suggestions for classroom teachers as they guide students toward an understanding of these relationships. Chemistry and Unifying Themes of Science, chapter 3, highlights the connections between chemistry and the unifying themes of science as articulated by the National Research Council and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. For example, chemists consider energy changes in bond breaking and formation; physicists investigate the relationship between work and energy; biologists examine energy changes within biological systems; and earth scientists explain ecosystem changes in terms of solar energy. The chapter’s authors suggest that a unifying theme approach to the teaching and learning of science serves to break down disciplinary boundaries while highlighting the unique perspective that each discipline brings to bear on a particular theme. The role of inquiry is so central to the 1996 NSES document that an addendum, Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards: A Guide for Teaching and Learning, was published in 2000 (4). Even though it has been eight years since that addendum was released, inquiry approaches remain a focal point of chemistry education. As such, CNSES, second edition, places special emphasis on inquiry approaches with two research-based models of inquiry learning, Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) and Model-Observe-Reflect-Explain (MORE), detailed in chapter 4, Inquiry Learning:
© Division of Chemical Education • www.JCE.DivCHED.org • Vol. 86 No. 1 January 2009 • Journal of Chemical Education
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Chemical Education Today
Association Report: SOCED What Is It? How Do You Do it? The authors provide a discussion of the principles of inquiry, research results that support this approach, descriptions of POGIL and MORE, and their effective implementation. An updated chapter 8, Bringing Social and Personal Perspectives into Standards-Based Chemistry Instruction in an Urban School District, discusses science in personal and social perspectives, looking specifically at this standard as implemented in an urban school district. Other chapters were updated to reflect the current educational landscape: the increased use of research-based standards to improve student learning (chapter 15, Using the Research-Based Standards To Help Students Learn) and the professional development needs of pre-service, in-service, and second-career teachers (chapter 10, Professional Development of Chemistry Teachers). The book concludes with chapter 16, ACS and Its Role in the Future of Chemistry Education, which highlights ACS resources designed to enhance the teaching and learning of chemistry. New Directions Changes to this second edition reflect changes in education over the past 12 years. No Child Left Behind legislation has significantly changed public K–12 education, particularly in the area of student assessment, since the publication of the first edition of CNSES. Chapter 11, Assessment of Student Learning, has been updated to provide guidance on designing test items that effectively measure student learning. Chapter 7, Technology Standards and the Chemistry Laboratory, responds to the increased use of technology in the high school chemistry classroom by presenting several possibilities for integrating technology into the chemistry laboratory, such as graphing calculators and probes for data collection. The major reform of AP courses by the College Board, currently underway, is addressed in chapter 12, AP Chemistry: Course and Exam Review. This new chapter presents the rationale for changing the AP chemistry curriculum as well as the “unifying themes” that are guiding the AP chemistry curriculum revisions. Chapter 14, Prior Knowledge of Chemistry Students: Chemistry K–8, addresses the prior knowledge that high school chemistry students bring with them from their K–8 learning, in addition to providing a brief review of misconceptions that are
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common among these students. This chapter also explains how misconceptions develop and uses research on how students learn to offer practical suggestions for chemistry teachers. This edition of CNSES also provides suggestions for effective instruction of students learning the English language in chapter 13, Embracing Diverse and English Language Learners in Chemistry. Bretz explains that this was not an issue in the first edition. However, there is a “large need for information on this topic,” she says. This new chapter offers practical solutions to the chemistry teacher who has students learning English and chemistry at the same time. In summarizing the second edition of CNSES, Bretz notes, “I hope it will be a resource to advocate for chemistry.” Literature Cited 1. Chemistry in the National Science Education Standards, 2nd ed.; Lowery Bretz, S., Ed.; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2008. The book is available for download at http://www.acs. org by following the path Education > Educational Resources > High School or as a hard copy at www.acs.org/store (both sites accessed Nov 2008). 2. National Research Council (NRC). National Science Education Standards; National Academy Press: Washington, DC, 1996. 3. American Chemical Society. Chemistry in the National Science Education Standards, 1st ed.; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1998. 4. Olson, Steve; Loucks-Horsley, Susan, Eds. Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards: A Guide for Teaching and Learning; National Academy Press: Washington, DC, 2000.
Supporting JCE Online Material
http://www.jce.divched.org/Journal/Issues/2009/Jan/abs21.html Abstract and keywords Full text (PDF) with links to cited URLs
Kristin D. Collins served as a Web Editor in the Education Division at the American Chemical Society in 2008. She also works as a freelance writer who has authored stories on science education. Terri Taylor is Assistant Director for K–12 Education, American Chemical Society, 1155 16th Street NW, Washington, DC 20036;
[email protected].
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 86 No. 1 January 2009 • www.JCE.DivCHED.org • © Division of Chemical Education
