ChemEd X articles address topics in chemical education ranging across the entire spectrum of the chemical sciences.
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The Assessing for Change in Chemical Thinking (ACCT) group has created materials for chemistry teachers nationwide to employ in order to deliver professional development in your schools, districts, and professional organizations. The ten sessions constitute a full course of professional development, which we used to deliver over the course of an entire school year back in Boston. The design of the professional development is based upon three critical frameworks, each of which is a pillar that the PD rests upon. These three pillars are Chemical Thinking, the Formative Assessment Enactment Model and the Teaching Dilemmas. Understanding how these three pillars collectively support the ACCT model of professional development is critical to be able to deliver professional development sessions effectively. More information about each framework is linked above their respective infographics. Session at at glance pages for each of the nine sessions give an overview of what facilitators and participants should expect from each ACCT session.
The February 2021 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education is now available online to subscribers. Topics featured in this issue include: classic demonstrations, teaching during COVID-19, encouraging future scientists, games for teaching organic chemistry, student understanding of bonding, project-based learning, safety, computer-aided instruction, scientific literature, curriculum innovations, examining assessment, material science, research experiences, laboratory experiments, from the archives: teaching with household materials.
Chad Husting presented in a ChemEd X Talk and spoke about how he has transitioned to standards based grading during a pandemic! He shared some tips that have solved many of the problems that teachers struggle with including having a mix of face to face and virtual students and keeping up with late work, make-up work and missing assignments! You can watch the edited recording of Chad's Talk here.
This demonstration offers an alternative to the disappearing rainbow demonstration using readily accessible materials.
Some of the challenges associated with virtual instruction include connecting with students and checking for understanding in real time. On February 2nd, Michael Farabaugh presented a ChemEd X Talk about how he uses the interactive features of Nearpod to create formative assessment items that provide valuable feedback and facilitate student participation. You can watch the edited recording of Michael's Talk and access the lesson he shared during the presentation here.
The authors revisit "flattening the curve" demonstrations published during 2020 to see how they could represent the impact of vaccinations on the COVID 19 battlefront. These demonstrations do not demonstrate the mechanisms of vaccines themselves, but are rather analogies to their potential effect on a population. In these analogies, gas production still represents illness, but this time people are represented by objects added to the solutions which either enable gas production (unvaccinated individuals) or do not enable gas production (vaccinated individuals). These simple experiments are best used as stand-alone demonstrations, and links to videos are included in this writeup.
Session 2, a 3 hour session, extends the formative assessment experiences in session 1a and offers participants an opportunity to engage in an innovative lab formative assessment activity. Teachers will continue to build a collaborative professional learning community with a connecting activity, thinking like a student, and a chemical thinking discussion. The session requires a lab classroom for teachers to experience the Pringle design challenge. Time will be spent exploring the Formative Assessment Enactment model more deeply. Session 2 focuses on Chemical Control and touches on three of the six overarching ACCT objectives.
Political dilemmas will be associated with resistance from various stakeholders when school and organizational norms are questioned and routines of privilege and authority are disturbed.
Cultural dilemmas will emerge between teachers and students as classroom roles and expectations shift with an emphasis on chemical thinking.
Pedagogical dilemmas will arise as they address decisions about instructional materials and approaches and what to emphasize in learning experiences that a chemical thinking perspective demands.