Chapter 16: Lessons for Chemistry Education

This chapter considers what the discussion and analyses in the book suggest in terms of implications for teaching, and for fertile directions for further research. The account developed in the book suggests the kind of teaching likely to be most effective at supporting learners. That is, teaching that is seen as a kind of scientific activity, relying on a model of the students’ developing thinking that is iteratively refined through cycles of testing conjectures (imagining, but not assuming) how the learners’ interpretive resources may be engaged to support the process of making the unfamiliar familiar. Teaching needs to be planned in outline, but with room for improvising specific moves indicated by constantly monitoring how students are making sense of the ongoing teaching. Research can inform such teaching. There are a great many studies of student conceptions across topics, and of small-scale innovations to test out particular teaching approaches. There are fewer studies exploring the nuances of shifts in student thinking and how these might link to the specifics of classroom and lecture-hall teaching. Such studies are challenging, but are needed if we are to better understand the specific mechanisms by which the choices teachers make impact upon conceptual learning in chemistry.