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WOBBE DE VOS Dr. Wobbe de Vos died on Wednesday 17th July 2002. He was a fine chemistry-teacher trainer and a good researcher, and published numerous papers in international journals and in conference proceedings. He was very involved in the analysis of the chemistry curriculum. Several times he was invited to be a keynote speaker at national and international conferences. Chemical educators, researchers and practitioners alike, both in the Netherlands and abroad, will remember him for his important contributions to chemistry education. (CERAPIE had invited him to contribute to Theme Issue 2 on Structural Concepts, but he was unable because of his illness.)
Under this title, the 16th Symposium on Chemical Education at the University of Dortmund took place from the 22 to 24 May 2002. The intention of the symposium was to reflect about the following questions. What does the word 'research' mean in the field of chemical education? How do we deal with the connection between research and practice? The main objective of the symposium was to bring people from all these different areas within chemical education together and to promote understanding and respect between the stakeholders of the different directions. Another intention was to start thinking about a closer co-operation between the different fields of chemical education. The symposium was built on twelve papers in four sessions coming from six different European countries. Participants in discussion came from ten European countries and represented the researchers, teacher trainers and teachers perspective within chemical education. Presenters were the following:
The problems identified and discussed during the Symposium call for international co-operation for finding appropriate solutions to them. It is hoped that the symposium contributed to the solution of these problems by providing a forum for exchange of ideas and discussions that may lead to further international co-operation and joint efforts to improve chemical education. The Book of Proceedings is published by Shaker Publishing, Aachen, Germany. Single copies can be ordered from Bernd Ralle and Ingo Eilks (eilks@pop.uni-dortmund.de) for the price of 25 Euro (incl. postage and packaging). (This is an abridged version of a report sent by Bernd Ralle & Ingo Eilks) The 11th Variety in Chemistry Teaching, the annual conference organised by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Tertiary Education Group (CERG), took place from 9 to 10 September 2002 at the University of Keele, Staffordshire, UK. Conference organisers were: Stuart Bennett (Chairman), Department of Chemistry, The Open University; Tina Overton, University of Hull; Ray Wallace, Nottingham Trent University; and Paul Yates, University of Keele. Both oral contributions and poster presentations were included in the programme, as well as social events. This year's CERG Lecture was delivered by Georgios Tsaparlis, Editor of CERAPIE, and dealt with "Globalisation in chemistry education research and practice - Necessity or utopian dream?". The John Garratt Lecture was given by Professor Sir Harry Kroto, University of Sussex Nobel Laureate, President-elect of the Royal Society of Chemistry. The final (third) plenary speaker was Tony Rest, of the University of Southampton, who spoke about the design and production of multiple-language multimedia courseware; title of his talk was "Blessed Are Those Who Have Not Seen And Yet Have Believed".
The 4th International Conference of the European Science Education Research
Association (ESERA) organising committee of the ESERA2003 Conference
will take place in the Netherlands from 19 until 23 August 2003. The
Conference Web site is as follows:
The 7th ECRICE will be held at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Education, Ljubljana, Slovenia, from 1 to 5 September 2004. Note that the Conference will be delayed by one year, to avoid conflict with the ESERA Conferences that are organised biannually in odd years. President of the Scientific Advisory Committee will be S.A. Glazar and of the Local Organising Committee D. Krnel, both of the University of Ljubljana.
Dr. Frank Jenkins of the 'Education Center South' of the University of Alberta (address: 341 Education South, University of Alberta, Edmonton AB T6G 2G5; e-mail: fjenkins@ualberta.net), asked to get permission to reprint from CERAPIE the Abstract and Introduction to the May 2002 paper "Teaching chemistry progressively "(by Peter G. Nelson) in The Alberta Science Teacher newsletter or the Alberta Science Education Journal. They would then provide the URL for teachers to access the rest of the article on-line. Dr. Jenkins stated in his message to the editor of CERAPIE: "Since our chemistry curriculum is going to be revised, I would like to see this article distributed widely in Alberta to the Alberta Teachers' Association Science Council members." We remind our readers of the electronic free journal University Chemistry Education (UChemEd) which is published by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), and covers the teaching of chemistry in higher education. Volume 6, Issue No 2 (November 2002) will be shortly posted on the Web. Note that all issues from Volume 1, No. 1, are available at the following Web address: http://www.rsc.org/uchemed
The
second issue of the new journal "Journal of Baltic Science Education"
(JBSE) has new been published. The contents of the issue are as follows:
Understanding global and personal use of energy (by B. Andersson, F.
Bach, & A. Zetterqvist); The influence of experimental teaching
on 5 - and 7- year old children's concepts of the earth and gravity
(by E. Kikas, T. Hannust, & H. Kanter); The science teacher in the
situation of changing educational paradigm (by D. Namsone); Some aspects
of motivation of interaction with nature (by V. Lamanauskas); Aspects
of constructivism (by N. Valanides); Evaluation of Latvia's science
education in the IEA TIMSS and OECD PISA framework (by A. Geske &
A. Kangro); Questions of chemical content in the integrated courses
of natural sciences (by A. Bratennikova & E. Vasilevskaya); Science
teachers change towards STL teaching (by M. Rannikmae)
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