Integrating into Chemistry Teaching Today's Student's Visuospatial Talents and Skills, and the Teaching of Today's Chemistry's Graphical Language

Abstract

Today's out-of-school learning is dominated by PC games, videos, and TV. These media provide children with optimal conditions for nurturing their visuospatial intelligence. In chemistry and biochemistry, over the past 125 years, thinking has shifted from the logical-mathematical to the logical-visuospatial. In chemistry visuospatial thinking has never been so dominant as today. Thus in chemistry, a truly international, pictorial language has evolved. Yet, the founding and growth of chemical education as a separate discipline has resulted, albeit unintended, in an alienation of chemistry educators from these dramatic changes in chemistry. By confining themselves in their teaching of chemistry to the logical-mathematical and the verbal, teachers and chemical educators are conveying a false and abandoned conception of chemistry in the class rooms. And, they fail to address the most important developed intelligence of our young.