Teaching textbooks

The revitalization of chemistry education has received much recent attention and taken many forms. Modes of teaching, textbooks, laboratory instruction— all aspects of the chemistry curriculum have undergone scrutiny for reform. A recent National Science Foundation report, Shaping the Future New Expectations for Undergraduate Education in Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology characterizes the nature of the most successful curricular and pedagogical improvements ... 

This book differs from its ancestor in three ways. First, the amount of illustrative and exercise material has been enormously increased. Since the demand for a teaching textbook in this field far exceeds what I had previously anticipated, I have tried now to equip the new edition with the pedagogic paraphernalia appropriate to meet this need. 

This book is conceived as a textbook for application in teaching and self-learning of chemoinfoimatics. We aim to present a comprehensive overview of the field of che-moinformatics for students, teachers, and scientists from other areas of chemistry, from biology, informatics, and medicine. Those interested in a more in-depth presentation and analysis of the topics in this Textbook are referred to an accompanying set of four volumes. 

Many books on chemical kinetics have been published, but few of these are devoted solely or even primarily to solution phase chemical kinetics. Textbooks of physical organic chemistry must deal with solution chemistry, but kinetics is only one part of their subject. From my teaching experience I have concluded that there is no current text that meets the needs, as I interpret them, of the student and practitioner of solution chemical kinetics. 

Written by an NMR expert with longstanding teaching experience, the first edition of this textbook has been a huge success. New features of this thoroughly revised and substantially enlarged second edition include NMR spectroscopy of nuclides other than H and i3C and reverse procedures for recording spectra. Chemists, biologists. physicians, pharmacists and technical assistants will find this new edition even more useful for their daily work. 

It is therefore hoped that this present series of textbooks will prove to be a useful and valuable source of teaching material, both for individual students and for teachers of science courses. 

Therefore, it would be worthwhile to investigate how students understand the diagrannnatic representation of these processes as they encounter them in textbooks and in classroom teaching. 

Pozzer, L. L., Roth, W.-M. (2003). Prevalence, function, and structure of photographs in high school biology textbooks. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 70(10), 1089-1114. 

Chemical diagrams are one of the most commonly used forms of representation in teaching chemistiy. They are symbolic representations that present images and information of the sub-micro or molecular level. Since the snb-micro level cannot be observed directly, chemical diagrams of this level are used in textbooks, on posters, in videos, in software programmes, etc. by teachers to describe the snb-micro level and explain chemical phenomena. They play an important role in helping students... 

Are there differences between snch codes of representation nsed in chemistry and those used by chemistry teachers and textbook anthors in prodncing teaching models This seems to be a relevant factor irrflnencing the snccess of teaching models in helping stndents to rmderstand chemistry cmricrrlar models. 

The axiomatic teaching of Newtonian mechanics (NM)(I, 2), with or without calculus, is very effective. The abstract concepts are quickly connected by students to the practical experience and intuitive insight they have developed throughout their lives. This access to their own direct experience allows each student to make the necessary adjustments and corrections to the abstract concepts if the way they are presented by one particular teacher following one particular textbook does not optimally match the particular student s style and background. As a result, the majority of students of NM gain an effective level of understanding and skill within the time of the course. 

The Journal of Materials Education (JME) is a must for the departmental library. It is in fact a continuously changing textbook of teaching modules on new and emerging materials topics. Free reprint rights make the articles easily available. 

I am grateful to the graduate students who have served as my teaching assistants and who have brought to my attention various ambiguities in the text or problem statements. These include J. F. Welch, A. Yu, R. Krug, E. Guertin, A. Kozinski, G. Estes, J. Coca, R. Safford, R. Harrison, J. Yurchak, G. Schrader, A. Parker, T. Kumar, and A. Spence. I also thank the students on whom I have tried out my ideas. Their response to the subject matter has provided much of the motivation for this textbook. 

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