Designing Authentic Learning Environments in Chemistry Lessons: Paving the Way in Pre-Service Teacher Education
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Designing Authentic Learning Environments in Chemistry Lessons: Paving the Way in Pre-Service Teacher Education Andrea Schumacher • Christiane S. Reiners
Published online: 13 October 2012 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012
Abstract Authenticity has recently become a popular term in science education. A study focusing on authenticity in the sense of making chemistry lessons better resemble chemistry practice is carried out at the University of Cologne in the Institute of Chemical Education, where prospective chemistry teachers are trained. In the long run an innovative module shall be developed, which challenges teacher students’ pre-conceptions about characteristics of chemistry practice and supports them in translating their conceptions into authentic learning environments. This paper presents the first part of the project in which course elements to stimulate reflection on students’ attitudes were evaluated. Moreover the students were given an opportunity for teacher students to create a practical activity for pupils in order to detect aspects in which the students need more support, for example possible ways for this transformation or more experience with inquiry-based learning.
1 Introduction Authenticity is a catch-word not only in everyday-life but recently it has also become popular in the field of science education,1 without a common understanding what this term exactly means. There is a distinction between authentic related to ‘the students’ lifeworld’ and authentic related to ‘the practice of a scientific community’ (Barab et al. 2000). The latter can generally be depicted by the principle of ‘‘making science learning better resemble science practice’’ (Edelson 1998, p. 317). The idea of scientific practice as a foundation for science lessons describes the basis for this project, in which ‘practice’ is understood in a broader sense. On the one hand it relates to authentic chemistry practices 1
For example: Fox (2006), Hodson (1998), Roth (1998), Schwartz and Crawford (2006), Wiesner and Hopf (2004) and Woolnough (1998) as well as other literature cited in this paper.
A. Schumacher C. S. Reiners (&) Institute of Chemistry Education, University of Cologne, Herbert-Lewin-Str. 2, 50931 Ko¨ln, Germany e-mail: [email protected] A. Schumacher e-mail: [email protected]
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(Chinn and Malhotra 2002) and inquiry-based learning environments (Minner et al. 2010), which confronts pupils with aspects of scientific inquiry. On the other hand pupils should also acquire knowledge about chemistry as a scientific enterprise which also includes individual, social and institutional dimensions (AAAS 1990). These issues need to be addressed explicitly and reflected, because an understanding about them is not necessarily achieved by only conducting experiments (Abd-El-Khalick and Lederman 2000; Bell et al. 2003). Correspondingly designed learning environments are supposed to mirror how chemistry works as science and chemists as scientists by tra
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