Chemical curricula, development

Astrid M.W. Bulte is a researcher in science edncation, being since 1999 connected to the Freudenthal Institnte for Science and Mathematics Education at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. In her current position she focuses her research on the development and evaluation of authentic practice-based science units for secondary education. She contributes to the education of student - science teachers, teaching students how to communicate science issues. She takes a leading position in national curriculum developments. After she obtained her Master degree in Chemical Engineering Science in 1989, she completed her doctoral thesis in 1994 in the same subject at the same university. From 1994 till 1999, she was a teacher of physics and chemistry in secondary education. 

Mr. Kenkel has been the principal investigator for a series of curriculum development project grants funded by the National Science Foundation s Advanced Technological Education Program, from which four of his seven books evolved. He has also authored or coauthored four articles on the curriculum work in recent issues of the lournal of Chemical Education and has presented this work at more than twenty conferences since 1994. 

In 1993 Richard W. Schwenz and Robert J. Moore published a book, under the auspices of the American Chemical Society, entitled Physical Chemistry Developing a Dynamic Curriculum (/). This book followed a 1988 project by the Pew Mid-Atlantic Cluster on revision of the physical chemistry laboratory curriculum, and NSF funded workshops in 1990 and 1991 on physical chemistry curriculum development. Together they called for substantial changes in the content of the physical chemistry lab. 

Curriculum Development Center (2005) Chemical processes Chemistry 289/1 for 12th grade in natural and mathematical sciences branches (in Persian). Ministry of education, Tehran... 

In 1960 s, in addition to national projects for curriculum development a number of projects were started to serve a large regional area consisting of several countries. One such project was the UNESCO Pilot Project for Chemistry Teaching in Asia. This project was aimed at bringing together chemical educators from various Asian countries in touch with one another and with their counterparts at other places in the world for the purpose of providing the... 

A century of curriculum development in Canadian chemical engineering pleads for a depth of analysis well beyond the scope of this review. The American influence has dominated for almost three-quarters of that time so it is not surprising that Hougen s seven decades ) can be invoked as a matching scale, usually with some time lag, for... 

Promoting the inclusion of philosophical perspectives in the chemistry curriculum suggests a departure from common approaches, and hence offers a new perspective for future curriculum development efforts. Conventional approaches in curriculum design have typically included emphases on content knowledge (e.g. problem-solving in the context of substances, atomic structure and chemical reactions) or societal aspects of chemistry (e.g. effects of chemical pollution on the environment) in the writing of instructional activities. Numerous curriculum reform efforts have been based on these approaches. 

There have been very few initiatives to promote the development of teachers pedagogical content knowledge in this area. It seems that the outcomes of the current research on teachers (and students ) views and uses of models and modelling in chemical education, as well as the consideration of the role of models and modelling in the development of specific chemical knowledge, may lead to interesting proposals for curriculum development. 

Towards Research-Based Practice will help make chemistry teachers, curriculum developers, persons in control of designing chemistry competencies, and textbook authors aware of chemical education research that will promote change. Even this will he insufficient, however, unless teachers are convinced that change is needed, and they are provided with incentives and opportunities to make the needed changes. 

The REACTIVITY NETWORK, directed by E. K. Mellon, began formally in early 1987 with a planning conference supported by the ACS Society Committee on Education. Support for this project by the NSF began in the summer of 1987. The NETWORK is dedicated to reducing the endless mass of inorganic chemical reactivity information in the chemical literature into a form usable by teachers, curriculum developers, and textbook authors. Inorganic chemical reactivity was chosen as the primary focus of the REACTIVITY NETWORK because it provides colorful, interesting phenomena with which to rivet student interest, and because it yields a rich bounty of experimental problems at all levels for students to solve. 

In 1994, the American Chemical Society sponsored a project called "Foundations for Excellence in the Chemical Process Industries."The goal of the project was to develop voluntary industry standards for chemical process industry technical workers (laboratory and process technicians). The ACS has been supported in this research by a wide array of community, industrial, and educational institutions. The standards developed under this project were designed to assist educators in curriculum development, instructional strategies, and chemical and process technology program design. 

The Devil, it is said, is in the details. This seems to be very true of curriculum development. The early large-scale developments in the USA, notably the Physical Sciences Study Committee (PSSC, 1960), Harvard Project Physics (Ruflierford, 1970), Chem Study (Campbell, 1962), die Chemical Bond Approach (CBA, 1962), and the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS, 1959), all hoped to have an influence well beyond the confines of die USA. So diey did, but more often through the fact of their existence than through direct adoption in other countries. 

This book contains a number of examples, that serve to illustrate the presented theories. The examples are of a realistic nature, though they are simplified, and presented in a generalized form they are usually about the chemical reaction A + B —> P + 0. The author has avoided the complications inherent to specific chemical examples, and hopes that the reader may recognize familiar situations. The reader should not be discouraged by the large number of mathematical equations. The mathematics does not go beyond the level that is standard in any university chemistry curriculum. The equations serve but one purpose to be used to calculate the effects of known phenomena under altered conditions, e.g., for different concentrations, for larger scales, etc. These mathematical models serve as a tool for chemical reactor development. They may be used for the preliminary design of a reactor that is "first of a kmd . 

Chemical Engineering Curriculum Development Nationally and at the University of Kansas... 

One hundred years ago, in September 1888, Professor Lewis Mills Norton (1855-1893) of the Chemistry Department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology introduced to the curriculum a course on industrial chemical practice. This was the first structured course in chemical engineering taught in a University. Ten years later, Norton s successor Frank H. Thorpe published the first textbook in chemical engineering, entitled Outlines of Industrial Chemistry. Over the years, chemical engineering developed from a simple industrial chemical analysis of processes into a mature field. 

There seem to be no accounts of the actual competitive selection of contexts based on principles such as those. However, Bulte et al. (Bulte, Westbroek, van Rens, Pilot, 2004 Bulte et al, 2005) have undertaken context-based curriculum development based on the notion of authentic practice where the context selected is one in which the methodology adopted by the chemists and/or chemical technologists is clearly identifiable such that an analogy to it, suitable for work in a seminar room and laboratory, can be drawn. 

Eilks, I. (2003). Co-operative curriculum development in a project of Participatory Action Research within chemical education Teachers reflections. Science Education International, i (4), 41-49. 

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