Contribution from philosophy of chemistry to chemistry education: In a case of ionic liquids as technochemistry

Abstract

Traditional chemistry education is commonly handing down of concepts, principles, and theories, such as mechanical properties, the relationship between structure and properties as well as chemical structure and chemical bonding theory, to students without engaging them in the processes of chemical inquiry. This practice leads to the lack of opportunity for the students to construct an appropriate understanding of these concepts, principles, and theories. Students are also rarely facilitated in modeling the structure and function of matter themselves. This situation shows that the philosophy of chemistry has not received as much attention from chemistry educators. The main idea of this paper is to embed philosophy of chemistry through the implementation of technochemistry in chemistry education. One of the most interesting and rapidly developing areas of modern chemistry, technologies and engineering is Ionic Liquids (ILs) as an emerging knowledge on technochemistry which can be applied to chemistry education. The developments between academic researchers and industrial developments in the ILs area are conducted in parallel. In order to overcome the existing problems of scientific development in chemistry education, the science and technology of ILs can be used for reconceptualizing the teaching and learning of chemistry to embrace the epistemology in chemistry. This study promises a potential contribution by philosophy of chemistry. The main objectives of this study are to develop: (i) a perspective based on philosophy of science considerations (rational reconstruction) in order to understand ionic liquids and (ii) teaching materials that can be used to enhance pre-service teacher’s view of nature of science and technology (VNOST). The method used in the study is analytical-descriptive (elementarization), i.e. the first step in the model of educational reconstruction (MER). This study concludes that the development of the concepts and their applications of ionic liquids follow the inductive process. Experimental observations lead to scientific concepts which later can facilitate to elaborate explanatory theories.