The range of abstract concepts encountered when learning chemistry and the inability of students to make connections between the macroscopic, sub-microscopic, and symbolic representations, used in chemistry teaching, are believed to be the main reasons for students' difficulty when learning chemistry. Prediction and determination of molecular…

Are the ways of engaging with the world that students develop through higher education particular to bodies of knowledge they study? In this article, we examine how students' accounts of the discipline of chemistry in England and South Africa changed over the three years of their undergraduate degrees. Based on a longitudinal phenomenographic…

We present a critical discussion of how chemistry textbooks treat the electrolysis of water and aqueous salt solutions, based on a survey of general chemistry textbooks in English and Korean at secondary and tertiary levels, also informed by the historical background of 19th-century debates. English-language textbooks present various and…

Matter can be described and explained in a number of ways, using models of increasing complexity depending on the intended audience. Under the current National Curriculum for England, the kinetic theory of matter is taught to 11- and 12-year-olds in secondary schools to explain the structure of solids, liquids and gases and their behaviour when…

Previous research has reported that students commonly develop alternative conceptions in the core topic of chemical bonding. Research in England has reported that students there commonly demonstrate an alternative "molecular" conceptual framework for thinking about ionic bonding: in terms of the formation of molecule-like ions pairs…

The relationship between the structure and function of proteins is an important area in biochemistry. Pupils studying A-level Biology are introduced to the four levels of protein structure (primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary) and how these can be used to describe the progressive folding of a chain of amino acid residues to a final,…

The Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre is concerned with the retrieval, evaluation, synthesis, and dissemination of structural data based on diffraction methods. The source of input is almost entirely primary journals. Bibliographic information and numeric data on crystal and molecular structures are on magnetic tapes. The bibliographic file…

This paper reports the design and evaluation of small-scale teaching interventions addressing the epistemology of science as part of the regular high school science courses followed by English students. Although there is a growing consensus that the curriculum should include aspects of the nature of science, there is a limited body of knowledge…