Abstract
AbstractThis study introduces the Kitchen Chemistry (KC) course and its influences on chemistry education as a whole. KC is considered to be a life-relevant learning environment that engages learners in science through the pursuit of personally relevant and meaningful goals. KC, as a form of interdisciplinary learning, aims to develop boundary-crossing skills and to support the development of pupils’ scientific thinking. The purpose of this research was to determine how KC as a context-based teaching approach applies to chemistry education and what it offers to chemistry teaching and teacher education. We found that KC gave lower secondary school pupils the opportunity to understand the chemical phenomena in a familiar context. Teachers of visiting groups saw that integration is the challenge: pupils often see the subjects of chemistry and home economics as separate entities. The chemistry education students highlighted real-world connections to chemistry concepts and contexts. They also found KC to be an interesting form of teaching chemistry. According to the KC course teachers, the students were motivated and excited, and provided positive feedback on the course. These findings suggest that teachers and teacher education students need to be guided in actively using integration.
Highlights
The phenomenon-based approach is part of the new core curriculum for basic education in Finland (Finnish National Board of Education (FNBE), 2016; Symeonidis & Schwarz, 2016)
The Finnish National Core Curriculum recommends that learning environments offer the means to explore phenomena from different perspectives (Finnish National Board of Education (FNBE), 2016)
It is important to help learners see the relevance of science to their lives, and Kitchen Chemistry (KC) can assist with this
Summary
The phenomenon-based approach is part of the new core curriculum for basic education in Finland (Finnish National Board of Education (FNBE), 2016; Symeonidis & Schwarz, 2016). The Finnish National Core Curriculum recommends that learning environments offer the means to explore phenomena from different perspectives (Finnish National Board of Education (FNBE), 2016). At the core of phenomenon-based learning are real phenomena that are dealt with in a genuine context. The starting point for teaching is that phenomena or themes of the real world are examined as wholes in each subject and in interdisciplinary studies. Integrative instruction is an important part of a modern school culture and supports comprehensive basic education. The purpose of integrative instruction is to help pupils see the interdependencies and relationships between the phenomena to be studied (Finnish National Board of Education (FNBE), 2016)
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