Ingo Eilks & Avi Hofstein 
Relevant Chemistry Education [PDF ebook] 
From Theory to Practice

This book is aimed at chemistry teachers, teacher educators, chemistry education researchers, and all those who are interested in increasing the relevance of chemistry teaching and learning as well as students’ perception of it. The book consists of 20 chapters. Each chapter focuses on a certain issue related to the relevance of chemistry education. These chapters are based on a recently suggested model of the relevance of science education, encompassing individual, societal, and vocational relevance, its present and future implications, as well as its intrinsic and extrinsic aspects. “Two highly distinguished chemical educators, Ingo Eilks and Avi Hofstein, have brought together 40 internationally renowned colleagues from 16 countries to offer an authoritative view of chemistry teaching today. Between them, the authors, in 20 chapters, give an exceptional description of the current state of chemical education and signpost the future in both research and in the classroom. There is special emphasis on the many attempts to enthuse students with an understanding of the central science, chemistry, which will be helped by having an appreciation of the role of the science in today’s world. Themes which transcend all education such as collaborative work, communication skills, attitudes, inquiry learning and teaching, and problem solving are covered in detail and used in the context of teaching modern chemistry. The book is divided into four parts which describe the individual, the societal, the vocational and economic, and the non-formal dimensions and the editors bring all the disparate leads into a coherent narrative, that will be highly satisfying to experienced and new researchers and to teachers with the daunting task of teaching such an intellectually demanding subject. Just a brief glance at the index and the references will convince anyone interested in chemical education that this book is well worth studying; it is scholarly and readable and has tackled themost important issues in chemical education today and in the foreseeable future.” – Professor David Waddington, Emeritus Professor in Chemistry Education, University of York, United Kingdom

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From some historical reflections on the issue of relevance of chemistry education towards a model and an advance organizer – A prologue; HIGHLIGHTING THE INDIVIDUAL DIMENSION OF RELEVANT CHEMISTRY EDUCATION; Why is it relevant to learn the big ideas in chemistry at school?; Chemistry and everyday life: Relating secondary school chemistry to the current and future lives of students; Learning chemistry to enrich students’ views on the world they live in; Epistemic relevance and learning chemistry in an academic context; The role of values in chemistry education; Promoting metacognitive skills in the context of chemistry education; Promoting argumentation in the context of chemistry stories; HIGHLIGHTING THE SOCIETAL DIMENSION OF RELEVANT CHEMISTRY EDUCATION; Chemistry education for sustainability; The idea of filtered information and the learning about the use of chemistry-related information in the public; Making chemistry education relevant through mass media; Learning about relevance concerning cultural and gender differences in chemistry education; Science-technology-society as a feasible paradigm for the relevance of chemistry education in emerging countries.