Chapter 7: Making the Unfamiliar Familiar: Presenting Subject Matter
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Published:20 Dec 2024
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Special Collection: 2024 eBook Collection
Chemical Pedagogy
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Chemistry is a highly theoretical discipline that builds explanations of the material world with a wide array of abstract concepts. This chapter explores techniques for helping learners to understand the nature of abstract chemical concepts. The key issue is how teachers can effectively communicate an abstract idea that cannot be simply and directly shown to learners. It considers the presentation of chemistry in teaching, given the teacher’s key task starts with making the unfamiliar familiar. This chapter considers the role of models and representations, including simulations, as well as language (e.g., analogies) and the notion of multi-modal teaching. Using models and other representations is often essential in teaching abstract ideas, but they can be interpreted as, and so misunderstood as, realistic accounts by learners. So, this chapter argues for the need for making the chemistry classroom an epistemologically sophisticated learning environment where learners appreciate the roles of models and representations as useful tools in scientific thinking, as well as tools to support learning.