Chapter 13: Can YouTubers Provide Powerful Tools for Addressing Heterogeneity in the Classroom? An Analysis of Videos About the Periodic Table Using the TPACK Framework

Science educators have been concerned about the lack of interest that most students show in science topics for a long time. In fact, many students replace school textbooks with videos produced by YouTubers. This is not a contradiction but evidence of a gap between formal education and students’ interests. Our purpose is to outline a general approach to collaborate with teachers to establish criteria for an appropriate selection of YouTubers’ videos. We chose to focus on a fundamental topic in teaching of chemistry: the study of concepts related to the Periodic Table. We took samples of videos produced by YouTubers and classified them into categories that we built by analogy to those defined by the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework. We analyzed the videos by using these categories in terms of two dimensions: learning styles that could be stimulated and their possible contribution to the resolution or deepening of certain misconceptions. We found that the vast majority of videos analyzed provide contextual, structured and, simultaneously, visual and verbal learning styles. However, we observed that the use of these videos to study the Periodic Table without guidance from a teacher may contribute to and deepen students’ misconceptions.