Section C - Broadening the appeal - Science for all
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....but how do we teach chemistry to non-chemists?
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Geoff Potter,
Faculty of Applied Sciences, University of the West of England, Bristol, BS16 1QY, UK
tel: +44(0) 117 965 6261 ext 2983
fax: +44(0) 117 976 3871
e-mail: Geoff.Potter@uwe.ac.uk
Chemistry as one particular science
I would like to explore whether my feelings about my particular area of chemistry teaching (to non-chemists at UK university introductory level) find some resonance among other teachers of chemistry (not only in the UK and not only at tertiary level, of course). And, in the context of this conference, whether there are parallels with other sciences.
After 30 yr. of teaching chemistry in post-school education, I have become convinced that using portions (modules) from traditional chemistry courses does not serve non-chemist students well and certainly does not help in getting them back to an active interest in chemistry. By this I mean that the student may be pursuing other disciplines but is able to identify chemical problems within the discipline and employ a chemical approach to their solution. I think a similar statement may be made in more general terms along the lines ‘students pursuing non-science studies should nevertheless be able to recognise particular problems that are susceptible to scientific analysis and solution’.
Unfortunately, in trying to teach chemistry to non-chemists I have had to deal with large numbers of students who have lost interest in the subject and who don’t think they will ever understand it. Judging from comments of colleagues teaching such students in their final year, it is a self-fulfilling prophesy. Can we broaden this finding into the more general ‘lost interest in science’ and a consequent ‘doubt whether it will ever mean anything so why bother to try.....’ ? I think we can and we may find some indicators to answering the main questions of this conference - why are such students (non-chemists or non-scientists) loosing any early interest in science and how can we retrieve that interest?
‘Hard’ and ‘soft’ sciences
The original Call for Papers for this conference identified the problem of loss of interest in science in an age range of about 12-16 yr. As I have indicated above, this continues into post-school education even if the student pursues a course which is essentially ‘scientific’. This seems to be a contradiction but I suspect that it might be possible to resolve it by drawing a distinction between the ‘hard’ (= mathematical, rigorous, analytical etc.?) sciences and the ‘softer’ (= descriptive etc.) sciences. However, I want to make it clear that I do not equate ‘hard’ with ‘difficult’ nor ‘soft’ with ‘easy’; the terms are meant to indicate different mental approaches.
In my chemistry teaching I deal with large numbers of students pursuing biologically or environmentally orientated courses who have chosen these routes partly because ‘they couldn’t do chemistry’. Nevertheless, quite overtly, we require such students to become familiar with some quite advanced chemical concepts. The use of concepts from physics is less overt so the excuse that ‘they could not do physics’ either is not encountered so often. In the UK, maths seems to be a universal problem (and we blame the pocket calculator). So, in suggesting possible causes and solutions for a perceived problem in non-chemistry science students in their university careers, I think I may find that I am on common ground with educators dealing with school students as they explore science as it begins to divide into ‘hard’ and ‘soft’.
I wonder whether these divisions correlate with the introduction of concepts (particularly abstract ones) into the sciences. Do sciences remain ‘soft’ while they based largely on observation and classification? Do they become ‘hard’ when they introduce explanations and relationships which are essentially abstract (and mathematical). If ‘hard’ sciences are to become popular the concepts have to be made descriptive and visual. There are numerous popular science books in which virtually all the mathematical equations have been weeded out. Of course, many teachers would not regard these as textbooks but at least they are read - how many real textbooks are really read?
In the UK education system the division of a science into what I am calling ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ probably starts in the age range we are concerned with in this conference, 12 - 16, and is well entrenched by start of the UK ‘A-level’ syllabuses (16 - 17). There must be many reasons why an increasing proportion of students shy away from science subjects - approaches used in the media, the highly condensed presentations which either glamorise topics or condemn them; the exciting nature of new science which is just unobtainable at school; science seen as creating problems rather than solving them; the diminishing resources available for school science - particularly in the provision of sufficient and challenging laboratory classes; the increasing demands of safety legislation; the perceived lack of a financially rewarding career structure in science industry..... I can only bemoan these factors.
I do not think science is alone in perceiving a falling off in interest. I am sure music teachers, religious studies teachers, history teachers and others could make similar complaints and put forward similar reasons and solutions. What is surprising about science is that society is so science based, so dependent on the technologies derived from scientific discoveries that it seems contrary to reason that interest in science should wane.
Do fundamentals obscure understanding?
In attempting to restore the interest in science (and chemistry in particular) I suggest that we need to get away from an apparent obsession with teaching a ‘whole science’ (eg. chemistry) to non-science students and develop the case-study type approach that takes a situation that the student can recognise and work down into the ‘chemistry’ from there on a need-to know basis. If we insist on starting with highly abstract concepts and developing the knowledge base from the fundamentals we risk bewildering the non-science students and loosing their interest.
I see chemistry as one of the most central sciences; it merges into almost all the other sciences to some extent. I see its power to explain the materials of the world and its potential to produce new materials with defined properties that not even nature has previously synthesised. I know how to use it and I am excited by it as a science. And yet it is seen from ‘outside’ as something separate and ‘chemicals’ are regarded with suspicion as unnatural things causing pollution. If I am to get a positive image of chemistry across to non-chemists (of any age) I must start from the outsiders’ point of view. It will only raise more barriers if I start with a hundred or so elements with s, p, d and f orbitals and show that the periodic table ‘arises quite naturally from this’. Again, the details of chemical bonding give a marvellous explanation for the properties of molecules and the substances they form but to give a detailed description of, say, a molecule of glucose and expect students to realise from this that it is very important biologically is really putting the cart before the horse.
An alternative teaching approach
Of course, if you are going to be a chemist starting with the fundamentals makes sense and you will be sympathetic to that approach. But only a small proportion of the population will work as chemists and yet we teach all students in that sort of way. If we are to get away from this trap we must give up teaching ‘chemistry’ to the majority of students and use topics that involve (some) chemistry as a vehicle for getting across a chemical approach to problems and solutions. A non-chemist cannot be expected to master all the details of the chemistry but s/he should be able to appreciate what needs to be known, how the knowledge is retrieved or found and how it is used to devise solutions. Similar statements could be made for other sciences.
Changing the teaching approach will not, in itself, restore enthusiasm for science even if it improves understanding of scientific issues. Factors which have for years been acknowledged to be beneficial include the enthusiasm of the teacher, laboratory work that really allows the student to investigate some (even simple) phenomenon and the benefit to the student of finding that some piece of science has some relevant meaning or use. Modern pressures militate against all of these factors and somehow they must be restored.
In the UK, there is now, quite rightly, an increased emphasis on the learning process which is a better way of assessing the effectiveness of any educational situation. It does, in fact, imply that delivering what the student needs is more important than teaching a subject. This is very much an oversimplification but I believe my comments in this article are in line with it (even if I have used the word ‘teaching’ much more than ‘learning’!)
CAL programmes (whether they are on disc or on ‘the Web’) are usually the first to be quoted as ways of enhancing students’ learning but they only just becoming of sufficient quality that they can ‘catch the imagination’ of the non-scientist. Too many are just glorified textbooks on screen - far too much text for this medium, far too little interaction. Fine for repetitive calculation practice for the intending scientist but where is the attraction for the non-scientist?
Science starts from seeing and, in particular, seeing things change. CD-rom technology is beginning to deliver moving images of reasonable quality but have we missed an opportunity in the videos and video-discs where the quality is still much superior?
There is, of course, still a place for textbooks and these days they are generally beautifully illustrated and meticulous in detail. But I find college chemistry ones are still far too traditional in their content to be really what the non-chemist needs. Are we to say the same for other sciences and for school science?
The sciences grow faster than any other subject and because we try to teach from fundamentals to explanations we are always afraid of not ‘covering the syllabus’. If we adopt an approach that chooses topics of relevance to non-scientists and works down into the science in them we might find we could let go of the obsession with the syllabus. Could we even envisage science at school as being in the form of ‘topics for this year’ - rather like chosen books for English courses or composers for music studies?
Evaluation and further exploration
I do not really know whether this chemical-topics approach will rekindle interest in non-science students but, at least, it does not raise barriers (cognitive, intellectual, conceptual or terminological) at the start. The amount (or lack) of success we attribute to it at the end of the students’ education will depend on what criteria we use to evaluate that success. My impression is that too little evaluation is done and I can think of several reasons why - feedback from student questionnaires can easily give a distorted impression of what their learning experience was like; assessment scores take several years for clear trends to emerge; comparison of test and control groups implies resources unavailable to most schools.
A (woefully small) survey I did recently for one of my courses gave a very neutral response as to whether traditional or radical approaches were favoured by the students. When I have heard of results of more reliable evaluations, it has been along the lines of "the test scores were not much better than the control group - but the students were happier" with an implication that the teachers were too. Maybe that is the answer - enthusing through investigative approaches in relevant topics. After all, we are not trying to turn all students into scientists, but we do know they will benefit from knowing how scientists think.
I realise that much of what I have said is conjecture and unsubstantiated. Much, too, is borrowed (wittingly or unwittingly - my apologies for the lack of referencing) but I hope that this collection of my thoughts and feelings will strike useful chords in other teachers minds. I am not aware of any co-ordinated attempts to deal with the chemistry for non-chemists / science for non-scientists problem. I would be most grateful to receive any comments for or against these ideas and any websites etc. where the matter is being pursued.
© Geoff Potter 1998