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Georgios TSAPARLIS
EXCERPTS: This Invited Special Section is the second and last of the series Contributions of Educational Research to the Practice of Chemistry Education. It contains three contributions by Robert Bucat, Peter G. Mahaffy, and Avi Hofstein. In their position papers, Bucat and Mahaffy deal with the connection of the content of chemistry with the learner. Bucat calls for the use of pedagogical content knowledge, while Mahaffy proposes the metaphor of ‘tetrahedral chemistry education’. Hofstein, on the other hand, reviews educational research on the role of laboratory in chemistry education. Chemistry Content Knowledge and Pedagogical Content Knowledge. ... knowledge of the content is a necessary but not sufficient condition for teaching chemistry (or any other subject); it is knowledge of the process of learning and the learner that provides the sufficient condition. Robert Bucat maintains that “chemistry education research seems uncertain of its direction ... A way out of this deadlock could be that of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), that is the combination of content knowledge with pedagogical knowledge. ... “Currently in the teaching profession, the accumulated PCK of each of its participants grows with experience, peaks at retirement, and disappears ... This ‘professional amnesia’ afflicts science teaching. Peter G. Mahaffy starts with the ‘diverse forces’ that “shape the teaching and learning of chemistry at the beginning of the 21 st Century” ... To respond to “those forces, new dimensions to learning chemistry must be emphasized”. Mahaffy proposes ‘Tetrahedral chemistry education’ as ‘a new metaphor’... The laboratory in chemistry education. Theory and experiment are ... not independent of each other, and yet in teaching practice they are treated as if they were independent. A considerable amount of research ... has pointed at significant problems, notably the ineffectiveness of laboratory instruction in enhancing conceptual understanding. Problematic also is practical work at university. In this special section, Avi Hofstein reviews the contribution of educational research to the examination of the role of laboratory in chemistry education, with particular emphasis to his thirty years of relevant experience and research work. Throughout these years of involvement with “all facets of chemistry curriculum in the upper secondary schools in Israel”, he covered most of “the domains that characterize practical work in the context of chemistry laboratory”...
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