Learning secondary schools

The concepts of service learning and engaged universities have come into the educational lexicon in recent years. The possibility to volunteer with service organisations, to shadow potential employers or to contribute in numerous ways to the community can broaden the learning experience and give students contacts in the real world that could be useful later. In 2003 an environmental art project in Lincoln, Nebraska, was initiated with secondary school students acting as teachers and resource people for elementary students both groups found... 

Bob, isn t it awesome that such a little formula captures a piece of reality You bet. And it was formulated by a secondary-school teacher in Basel, Switzerland, but Balmer never knew why the formula worked. We ll learn about the why in a moment. In 1913 Niels Bohr found that the Balmer formula supported his theory of discrete energy states within the hydrogen atom. ... 

Chemistry is a compulsory subject in curriculum of secondary schools in many a countries. It is a must for further education required by many a socially attractive occupations (medicines, engineering etc.). In view of this we should expect no problem in motivation for chemistry learning but it has been found by majority of chemistry teachers that their students consider chemistry as hard, dull and boring. To change this attitude teacher and curriculum developers made an attempt by concentrating on the materials to be learnt. Changes in curriculum occur slowly and to avoid any frustration due to these slow changes teachers should find other ways to tackle the problem. 

How do most twelfth graders feel about cocaine and crack use The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services National Institute on Drug Abuse carried out a study of attitudes toward drug use among secondary school students. Some of what they learned ... 

The purpose of the conference was to create effective ways of presenting physics to college students who are not preparing to become professional physicists. Such an audience might include prospective secondary-school physics teachers, prospective practitioners of other sciences, and those who wish to learn physics as one component of a liberal education. 

We stand at an important cross-roads if we wish to take advantage of recent advances to improve learning in secondary schools. .. 

West, L. (1988) Implications of recent research for improving secondary school science learning, in P. Ramsden (ed.) Improving Learning New Perspectives. London Kogan Page. 

Students in most, if not all, countries learn about chemical kinetics in school. It is therefore surprising that this theme has not more frequently been the focus of science education research. Indeed, there are very few studies in which the teaching of chemical kinetics has been analysed from the perspective of either teachers or students understanding at the secondary school level. 

In secondary school, students learn that different energy phenomena, like sound, light, heat, movement, or electric effects, accompany chemical reactions. Of these, the role of heat is the most evident to students because of the nature of the examples presented. For this reason, we will mainly focus on the role of heat in chemical reactions. A special place in the secondary school curriculum has been reserved for reactions in which electricity is used (electrolysis) or produced (electrochemical cells). These electrochemical processes are treated in Chapter 14 of this book. 

A more recent version of the learning package has been published in English (Ben-Zvi Silberstein, 1994). It is meant for students at an advanced level in secondary schools aiming at an introduction of sophisticated concepts like entropy and Gibbs energy, and the thermodynamic treatment of chemical equilibrium. 

We think that in secondary school students will not meet the circumstances in which such an analysis is preferable. This means that thermodynamics is not needed to describe reaction energetics at the secondary school level. The forms-of-energy framework is sufficient. However, it should be emphasised that forms-of-energy do not really exist, because a firm belief in their existence may obstruct further learning of thermodynamics (Kaper Goedhart, 2002 b). 

Albert Pilot was appointed in 1996 as professor of curriculum development in IVLOS Institute of Education at Utrecht University, in 1998 also as professor of Chemistry Education in the Department of Chemistry of that university. His work is concentrated in the field of curriculum development in secondary school chemistry and in higher education, iimovafion processes and the use of information and communication technology in education. He studied Chemistry at Utrecht University in The Netherlands, with a major in analytical chemistry and a minor in educational research. His PhD was in 1980 on Learning problem solving in Science, more specific in Thermodynamics, at the University of Twente. 

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