Albert Pilot

A research approach to designing chemistry education using authentic practices as contexts

We discuss how to reduce the incongruence between the outcomes (both cognitive and affective) of the conventional secondary chemistry curriculum and what is to be attained: the meaningful connection of students’ learning to daily life and societal issues. This problem is addressed by a design study with one curriculum unit about “Water Quality”. With several research cycles using developmental research, we developed an emergent understanding about an instructional framework for curriculum units that embodies a coherent “need‐to‐know” principle and is based on authentic practices. Using this framework we show with some other examples how a context‐based chemistry curriculum can be constructed based on the developed “need‐to‐know” principle.

Culturally appropriate pedagogy: the case of group learning in a Confucian Heritage Culture context

Cultural heritage preservation has become a much‐debated topic in recent decades. This paper contributes to the call for educational approaches that take a societys cultural diversity into account. It also attempts to draw attention to non‐Western societies, where educational theories and practices from elsewhere (the West) have been imported and applied without proper consideration for the host cultures heritage. To illustrate the intricacy of developing such a culturally appropriate pedagogy, a case study of using group learning strategies in a Confucian Heritage Cultural context is introduced, which closely examines both educational and cultural issues. The results of this examination reveal a complex web of cultural conflicts and mismatches that are likely to happen when a Western educational methodology is applied in another context without rigorous adaptation to improve compatibility with the host culture.

Peer assessment in university teaching: evaluating seven course designs

Peer assessment is understood to be an arrangement with students assessing the quality of their fellow students’ writings and giving feedback to each other. This multiple‐case study of seven designs of peer assessment focuses on the contribution of peer assessment to the acquisition of undergraduates’ writing skills. Its aim is to arrive at an optimal design of peer assessment. Factors included in this study are: the quality of peer assessment activities, the interaction between students in oral peer feedback, students’ learning outcomes, and their evaluation of peer assessment. Most students took assessing the work of their fellow students seriously, and included the peer feedback in the revision of their work. In most conversations, students provided feedback in an evaluative manner. In others, the interaction was more exploratory. For peer assessment, we recommend a combination of written and oral peer feedback.

Design Principles and Outcomes of Peer Assessment in Higher Education.

This study was aimed at finding effective ways of organising peer assessment of written assignments in the context of teaching history at university level. To discover features yielding optimal results, several peer assessment designs were developed, implemented in courses and their learning outcomes evaluated. Outcomes were defined in terms of the revisions students made, the grades of the written products, and the perceived progress of products and writing skills. Most students processed peer feedback and perceived improvement in their writing as a result of peer assessment. Significant differences between grades of groups using or not using peer assessment were not found. Most teachers saw better‐structured interaction on the subject of writing problems in their classes. Important design features seemed to be the timing of peer assessment, so that it will not coincide with staff assessment, the assessment being reciprocal, and the assessment being performed in feedback groups of three or four students.

Neocolonialism in education: Cooperative Learning in an Asian context

This article is concerned with the influence of western educational approaches in non‐western countries and societies. This influence is frequently referred to as educational neocolonialism in the sense that western paradigms tend to shape and influence educational systems and thinking elsewhere through the process of globalisation. Given the perceived pressure to modernise and reform in order to attain high international standards, educational policy makers in non‐western countries tend to look to the west. Thus they may ‘borrow’ policies and practices that were originally developed and operated, and which appeared to be effective, in a very different cultural context to that of their own societies. In effecting such transfer, detailed consideration of particular aspects of the culture and heritage of the originating country is often neglected. To illustrate some of the problems that result from this, the article presents a case study of the application of Cooperative Learning, an educational method developed in the west, within an Asian context. Drawing upon Trompenaars and Hampden‐Turners typology of seven cultural dimensions, our examination of western method and eastern context reveals a complex web of cultural conflicts and mismatches. The paper concludes by suggesting that non‐western cultures should seek to reconstruct imported pedagogic practices in accordance with their own world views and in line with their own norms and values.

The Use of “Contexts” as a Challenge for the Chemistry Curriculum: Its successes and the need for further development and understanding

In this paper we reflect on the experiences and results of the development and implementation of context‐based chemistry education. This development is discussed with respect to five challenges defined for chemistry curricula (Gilbert, 2006). Five context‐based approaches were selected that will provide the data for this study (Bennett & Lubben, 2006; Bulte, Westbroek, De Jong, & Pilot, 2006; Hofstein & Kesner, 2006; Parchmann, Gräsel, Baer, Nentwig, Demuth, Ralle, & the ChiK Project Team, 2006; Schwartz, 2006). These approaches have been presented using a model to represent the spiral development of an ideal curriculum until the experienced and attained curriculum (Goodlad, 1979; Van den Akker, 1998). For each of the five approaches we analysed their contribution to the five curricular challenges, the essential characteristics of the outcomes and products, the conditions that were fostering and hindering the development, the design principles, the tools and the procedures used. The outcomes of the analysis are related to Gilbert’s criteria for the ‘use of contexts’ in chemistry education. This leads the identification of priorities as new hypotheses and challenges that set the future agenda for systematic curriculum development of context‐based chemistry education.

Concept Development and Transfer in Context-Based Science Education.

‘Context‐based courses’ are increasingly used in an address to the major challenges that science education currently faces: lack of clear purpose, content overload, incoherent learning by students, lack of relevance to students, and lack of transfer of learning to new contexts. In this paper, four criteria for the design of context‐based courses that would be successful in meeting these challenges are rehearsed. It is concluded that only a model based on ‘context as social circumstances’ would meet the four criteria for success. From this, the notion of concept development is presented based on the idea of the production of coherent mental maps. The notion of transfer is discussed in terms of how such mental maps may be useful for understanding other contexts. The definitions of concept development and transfer give a clearer view of how exemplars of existing context‐based approaches may be analysed to show their degree of facilitation of worthwhile science education. Research questions to be addressed in such analyses are presented.

Designing student peer assessment in higher education: Analysis of written and oral peer feedback

The nature of written and oral peer feedback will be described as it occurred in seven writing courses, each with a different design of peer assessment. In all courses, peer feedback was focused on evaluation, which is one of the four feedback functions. Feedback on structure was hardly provided. Relating feedback to design features, we suggest that feedback is adequate when (1) peer assessment has a summative (on the basis of a writing product) as well as a formative character (during the writing process); (2) the assessment is performed in small feedback groups; (3) the written feedback is orally explained and discussed with the receiver.

Normal Science Education and Its Dangers: The Case of School Chemistry.

We started the Conceptual Structure of School Chemistry research project, a part of which is reported on here, with an attempt to solve the problem of the hidden structure in school chemistry. In order to solve that problem, and informed by previous research, we performed a content analysis of school chemistry textbooks and syllabi. This led us to the hypothesis that school chemistry curricula are based on an underlying, coherent structure of chemical concepts that students are supposed to learn for the purpose of explaining and predicting chemical phenomena. The elicited comments and criticisms of an International Forum of twenty-eight researchers of chemical education, though, refuted the central claims of this hypothesis. This led to a descriptive theory of the currently dominant school chemistry curriculum in terms of a rigid combination of a specific substantive structure, based on corpuscular theory, a specific philosophical structure, educational positivism, and a specific pedagogical structure, involving initiatory and preparatory training of future chemists. Secondly, it led to an explanatory theory of the structure of school chemistry – based on Kuhns theory of normal science and scientific training – in which dominant school chemistry is interpreted as a form of normal science education. Since the former has almost all characteristics in common with the latter, dominant school chemistry must be regarded as normal chemistry education. Forum members also formulated a number of normative criticisms on dominant school chemistry, which we interpret as specific dangers of normal chemistry education, complementing Poppers discussion of the general dangers of normal science and its teaching. On the basis of these criticisms, it is argued that normal chemistry education is isolated from common sense, everyday life and society, history and philosophy of science, technology, school physics, and from chemical research.

Editorial: Why do you 'need-to-know': context-based education

Most of us who are scientists have enjoyed climbing this ladder as part of our education. We revel in the lofty view from the top. Unfortunately, many students do not see the connection between the successive rungs. They are not told and do not discover why or where they are climbing. Before long they develop vertigo. Often they jump or fall off the ladder before they reach the top. All they take from the experience is distaste for science. (Schwartz, 2006)