Chemical Education Today
Editorial
What Next? In the kickoff article in the millennial issue of Scientific American, Sir John Maddox, longtime editor-in-chief of Nature, speculates that “The most important discoveries of the next 50 years are likely to be ones of which we cannot now even conceive.” Citing relativity, quantum theory, and the molecular basis of genetics, Maddox makes a convincing argument that this was true at the turn of the 20th century and therefore is likely to be true now (Scientific American, December 1999, 281(6), 62–67). New discoveries, almost by definition, take unexpected, unpredictable directions. This implies that no teacher can identify everything that will be important for students to learn, and that it is crucial for students to learn to deal with and keep their minds open to new information, new paradigms, and new applications of science and scientific research. The stodginess of chemistry curricula and our unwillingness or inability to act on facts that any scientist ought to be able to discern are a major concern in an era of accelerating scientific discovery. By far the majority of students taking chemistry courses in the first two years of undergraduate studies do not intend to become chemists. Most plan careers in biomedical sciences or engineering, though often they have not chosen a specific field. Chemistry is central among the sciences, a fact of which we are justifiably proud. Almost any scientific career requires background knowledge of chemistry, and so students taking introductory college courses have a broad range of interests. Why, then, do we not provide them with far more examples of how chemistry concepts are applied in these other fields that they are interested in? One school of thought argues that if we confine a curriculum to the fundamentals, students will discover on their own how to apply what they have learned and will be able to use it effectively in a variety of unforeseen circumstances. This approach has the advantage of minimizing the content of a curriculum, but it risks disciplinary insularity and carries the major disadvantage of not providing practice in process skills. Examples of such skills are applying concepts to new situations and communicating with others who have different knowledge—just what students will need to deal with new kinds of scientific discoveries. Disciplinary insularity can be avoided and process skills can be developed at the same time. By bringing cutting-edge research into the classroom, we can ask students to apply what they are learning to areas they are interested in, and we can encourage them to discuss and collaborate on their solutions to problems that might be intractable for individuals. Where is the cutting edge, and where is it going next? The interests of new faculty joining my own and many other chemistry departments are in multidisciplinary projects. They are applying chemistry to problems in molecular biology, medicine, materials science, environmental science and engineering, green industrial chemistry, and other areas that do not fall readily into our traditional classification of chemistry as organic, inorganic, physical, or analytical. They are collaborating with faculty members from several different de-
partments, applying …excitement can become their various kinds of expertise and knowlpart of our courses and edge to problems that curricula if we resolve to defy assignment to any single discipline. embrace the diversity of They are excited about applications of chemistry what they are doing, and they are discoverand continually incorporate ing things “of which them into our teaching. we cannot now even conceive”. Such excitement can become part of our courses and curricula if we resolve to embrace the diversity of applications of chemistry and continually incorporate them into our teaching. This is not a trivial undertaking, especially given the time constraints on most of us, but the new millennium is also bringing us better tools by which it can be accomplished. Agencies that fund research are more cognizant of the importance of communicating results to teachers and students as well as to other researchers. Educational activities are a required part of many National Science Foundation grants, and the National Institutes of Health has initiated a Curriculum Supplements Series for high school biology that many chemistry teachers will find valuable (http://science-education. nih.gov/nihHTML/colsupp/index.htm). Another important tool is information technology. The Web provides information to the nth degree—so much that it is often difficult to find and evaluate what is there. However, a number of government and industrial sites provide excellent reports on scientific discoveries and multidisciplinary projects, and it is easy to direct students to them from a course Web site. JCE Internet’s List of Reviewed WWW Sites can help you to find much useful information on the Web. Information technology will also afford us much better means of communication and collaboration, which we educators will certainly need to keep up with the rapid pace of scientific discovery. This includes communication among small groups of individuals with like interests, as well as large-scale collaborations. JCE, for example, exemplifies collaboration among authors, reviewers, editors, and readers, and our recent move to full online access for all subscribers will enhance communication among all our constituents. Finally, we are fortunate that many young scientists are interested in careers that are devoted mainly to teaching and communicating chemistry. These people seek positions where they can apply scientific principles to problems that involve instruction. They are fascinated by the complicated processes by which learning chemistry takes place and want to collaborate with others whose interests are similar. Many also have backgrounds in the new multidisciplinary areas to which chemistry is being applied. More power to them as they discover things “of which we cannot now even conceive” about chemical education.
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 77 No. 1 January 2000 • Journal of Chemical Education
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