Philosophy of Chemistry and Chemistry Education

Abstract

The chapter provides the background to why it is important to include epistemic themes in chemistry pre-service teacher education. It includes an introduction to the book by reviewing the literature on philosophy of chemistry and its broad implications for chemistry education. Philosophy of chemistry is the disciplinary context for the consideration of epistemic issues in chemistry. It is a relatively new area within philosophy of science having been formalised with its own journals and conferences since the 1990s. Although research at the intersection of philosophy of chemistry and chemistry education has begun to emerge, the focus on chemistry teacher education is practically non-existent in the literature. The review of the interplay between philosophy of chemistry and chemistry education suggests that the recommendations are fairly abstract for the pragmatic purposes of chemistry teacher education and do not take into consideration the empirical evidence on how pre-service teachers learn. In order to focus the discussion on some concise and useful ideas on what epistemic aspects of chemistry could be included in teacher education practice, we propose a framework consisting of the epistemic aims and values, practices, methods and knowledge of science. These components are collectively referred to as the “epistemic core”. The potential benefits of teaching and learning of the epistemic core are discussed, and a summary of the whole book is presented.