To promote the integration of aesthetic
education into chemistry
education, this study designed activities to photograph precipitation
reaction experiments with a smartphone, thereby combining experimental
inquiry with artistic creation across disciplines. These activities
were divided into (i) perceiving, (ii) appreciating, (iii) exploring,
and (iv) creating the beauty of chemistry. The participants first
used macrophotography to capture the details and small changes of
a precipitation reaction to obtain an impression of beauty. Then,
they managed to understand, appreciate, and evaluate the beauty of
the precipitation reaction from an artistic vision (admiring chemistry
like an artist). Next, the students explored the fascinating phenomenon
from a chemical perspective and looked for its inherent laws. Finally,
they consistently improved the experimental and photographic methods
and created works of scientific photography. These activities are
suitable for students from primary school to college, and even for
the general public. The experiments can be completed in only 1 min,
but several hours can be spent to improve the results. In the end,
most students are able to take high-quality photographs of precipitation
reactions.
The topic of chemistry safety was
included at the margins of traditional
chemistry education in China. In order to understand the concerns
of the safety issues based on the new chemistry curriculum in the
mainland China secondary school, this study analyzed old and new secondary
chemistry curriculum standards via the Natural Language Processing
& Information Platform (NLPIR). Results show that the frequency
of chemistry-safety-related words increased in the new curriculum
standards. Evidence that the safety content is enriched and enhanced
can also be found in the new textbook. In addition, content analysis
of lesson plans from Jiangsu teaching contests reveals that the chemistry
teachers (CTs) pay more attention to the safety risk of experiments,
but they generally ignore the consideration of risks from the perspective
of the uncertainty of chemical reactions.
Chemistry education has been affected in various aspects, especially teaching models, teaching technology, curriculum design, and teaching assessment, in Chinese Mainland since COVID-19 struck. To explore the change in teaching performance and differences in those teaching performances between middle school teachers and university teachers, this study analyzes 46 chemical education journal articles in three academic levels, including Junior High School (JHS), Senior High School (SHS), and university through content analysis method. The result shows that all levels of chemistry teachers (CTs) prefer to adopt two teaching models (live teaching or a combination of live and recorded teaching) and use Tencent Meeting as a teaching platform, but, university chemistry professors can integrate some software (MOOC and WeiXin as well as QQ) into their class to improve the effectiveness of teaching. As for curriculum design and teaching assessment, university teachers can employ the news in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic to carry out teaching more deeply than middle school teachers because university students learn more professional chemistry knowledge, but, all of them tend to evaluate students promptly (like oral assessment) through classroom interaction. Thus, it suggests the government and the school develop educational applications/software and teaching resources and a diverse curriculum to enhance online teaching work both domestically and foreign. And, it is also suggested that teachers should actively participate in the training of educational technology and strengthen cooperation with teachers in other disciplines to build interdisciplinary classrooms.
The diversity of scientific methods has received increasing attention in the field of science education. This paper aimed to investigate how preservice chemistry teachers perceive scientific methods and their diversity. Based on the theoretical framework of Brandon's Matrix and previous research, two tasks (i.e., Task 1 "understanding of the components of Brandon's Matrix" and Task 2 "views on the diversity of scientific methods") and follow-up interview questions were developed in this study as research instruments. 130 preservice chemistry teachers from two universities in China were selected as participants. The statistical results of the questionnaire survey revealed that the participants showed a relatively satisfactory understanding of the components of Brandon's Matrix, and they judged the hypothesis testing more accurately than variable manipulation. However, the majority of participants held relatively naive views on the diversity of scientific methods, suggesting that they endorsed the idea of "the scientific method". Moreover, it was found by in-depth interviews that four typically held reasons led to the misunderstanding of scientific methods by preservice chemistry teachers, namely, misinterpreting the liberal meaning of item scenarios, misconceptions in identifying the "variable manipulation", grade disparity in the scientificity, and past learning experience in chemistry. At the end of this paper, the implications of the findings and the suggestions for further research were discussed.
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