Describes the modular approach created by ChemConnections that involves change in content and pedagogy. Reports on two comparative evaluation studies that assess the impact of the modular approach on students' understanding, reasoning skills, and attitudes toward chemistry. Indicates that modular classroom section students outperformed the…

Describes a new curriculum called The Language of Chemistry designed to illustrate how problems of biological and/or medical importance can be understood on a molecular basis and to show that the logic, knowledge, and language needed are easily accessible. Among the case studies in the curriculum are the giant peacock moth, bacterial chemotaxis,…

Describes science teachers' positive and negative reactions to a literacy hour implemented into the science curriculum in England and Wales. (YDS)

This article is concerned with the founding purposes and justification of natural science in the statutory school curriculum. It offers a critique of the strand of argument and the proposals for reform which have developed after the report "Beyond 2000" focused on a particular usage of the term "scientific literacy". Two lines of argument are…

While there is frequent talk of integrating science with mathematics, and more recently, science with literacy, the author has always felt that at the elementary level there is more overlap between social studies and science. Mathematics and literacy share essential skills with science (e. g., measurement and data collection, observation and…

Chemistry should be fun and exciting, but much preparation and skill are needed by the teacher and students in working with chemicals. Unfortunately, accidents do happen and things can blow up, but these incidents can help be prevented by knowing and following proper safety procedures. Knowing which chemicals are appropriate for the middle level…

This study focused on informal reasoning regarding socioscientific issues. It sought to explore how content knowledge influenced the negotiation and resolution of contentious and complex scenarios based on genetic engineering. Two hundred and sixty-nine students drawn from undergraduate natural science and nonnatural science courses completed a…

This article examines the merits of the proposition that design and inquiry are conceptual parallels. It does so by first looking closely at the inquiry-related discourse within science education, then at aspects of the design discourse within engineering, and finally within technology education. Convergences and divergences of these two streams…

A new method is presented, which educates and empowers the teachers and assists them in incorporating entropy analysis in their curricula and also provides an entropy-analysis unit that can be used in classrooms. The topics that the teachers can cover depending on the ability of the students and the comfort level of the teacher are included.

Application of concepts presented in organic chemistry lecture using a virtual project involving the sythesis of medicinally important compounds is emphasized. The importance of reinforcing the concepts from lecture in lab, thus providing a powerful instructional means is discussed.

A partnership is formed between the University of Pennsylvania and local elementary, middle and high schools in West Philadelphia, with the general goal of creating mutually beneficial science partnership between K-12 schools and colleges and universities. Access to expertise and resources not ordinarily available are given to West Philadelphia…

Two Diels-Alder reactions are described that are suitable for a MORE (microwave-induced organic reaction enhanced) experiment in the organic chemistry laboratory course. A second experiment in which the splitting patterns of the vinyl protons in the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra of two MORE adducts are used in conjunction with molecular…

The Salters Chemistry courses, context-led curricula for 13-16 and 17-18 year old students, first developed by the Science Education Group at the University of York in the UK, have now been translated and/or adapted in seven other European countries. This paper describes and discusses the different reasons for taking up the courses, the ways in…

In this article, I argue that the enacted curriculum in the United States of America is driven by a politics of domestication--a negative process of acculturation by which individuals are required to conform uncritically to established norms in a community of practice, and by which they are prevented from using their own craft and/or professional…

The approaches of teaching organic (full year) and biochemistry courses in the United States colleges and universities are described. The revised courses are probably more useful and relevant for the students as they maintain and improve the education of chemistry majors.