Educacion Quimica最新文献

It is necessary to study the domain affective in science education, since emotions affect our learning process. Furthermore, the personal development involves both cognitive and affective components. For this reason, it is important to know the emotions experienced by students of Compulsory Secondary Education towards the Physics and Chemistry during the learning process. This paper aims to understand and analyze the emotions experienced by students of Compulsory Secondary Education towards aspects related to the student. The sample consisted of 84 Spanish students of the third year of Compulsory Secondary Education of two educative institutions of the province of Badajoz during the academic year 2013/2014. The most relevant results determined that the students experienced positive emotions when they got good results in this field. On the other hand, they experienced negative emotions when they had to solve a problem of Physics and Chemistry, as well as, performing oral presentations.

Today, there is an ongoing discussion about the need to change the science curriculum in pre-university levels, with the idea that they are not only addressed the disciplinary contents but also that the curriculum, contribute to the development of different thinking skills, management tools derived from technology and allows the student to better understand and apply knowledge within their own context. In the case of Mexico, due to our poor level of education expressed in various assessments, curriculum change is necessary and for this, the first step is to study the current situation in order to characterize the curriculum and find the strengths and areas opportunity. Therefore, this study is a curriculum analysis, specifically for teaching chemistry at the high school level, considering five specific programs of general chemistry from high school. To carry out this analysis considered five large axes: Nature of science, context, practical work, evaluation and substantive structure (including the paradigmatic structure).

Self-explaining refers to the generation of inferences about causal connections between objects and events for one's own consumption. Self-explaining is amongst the practices of science deemed essential for scientific competence; therefore, a valued learning outcome in itself. Nonetheless, generation of authentic explanations is seldom promoted in college science instruction. This work examined the effect of engagement in self-explaining on conceptual understanding of chemistry. Learning and performance tasks were completed individually in the classroom ecology of a large-enrolment General Chemistry course in the US. The study spanned a period of five semesters including pilot-tests and replications. The self-explaining intervention followed a multi-condition comparison design that used performance on a post-test to assess learning. Students were randomly assigned to the following conditions: reviewing a correct explanation, explaining correct or incorrect answers, explaining agreement with answers produced by others, and explaining their own answers. A cohort of students who underwent standard instruction with no intervention and had prepared for formal examination served as reference. The self-explaining cohorts performed better than the reference group, and in one case was the difference statistically significant. Findings suggest that self-explaining activities support students’ conceptual understanding at least as much as instruction. This study contributes evidence for the self-explaining effect and the ICAP hypothesis in a discipline where no evidence is available. Furthermore, it adds to the relatively little work in self-explaining that has explored naturalistic learning environments. This work supports the incorporation of self-explaining activities in the repertoire of instructional practices for General Chemistry.

Three different cases of reactions using end-groups in polymers were analyzed for the synthesis of block copolymers, such as: a) azide (RN₃) and alkine (RCCH) end groups to obtain a 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition (click chemistry), b) α,ω-hydroxy telechelic polymers (HOROH) and diisocyanates (OCNRNCO) to synthesize polyurethanes by polycondesation and c) alkyl halides (RCl or RBr) to prepare block copolymers derived of polystyrene by atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP).

To introduce more chemistry into a middle and high school bioengineering camp experience, we developed an educational and entertaining presentation that examines the chemistry in movies about aliens and minerals from outer space. Our goal was to help the campers to think creatively about the bioengineering projects they are doing and about its chemistry. After watching each movie clip, we explain whether the chemistry in the clip is real or fake, and then describe the real chemistry that inspired it. The chemical touchstone for the presentation is the periodic table. First, the campers learn that aliens in five movies are composed of the same elements as those found on Earth, although some do not have the same biochemistry. The second half of the talk is about the utility of extraterrestrial minerals of known composition. The campers learn that moviemakers speculate that people of the future might visit other celestial bodies to collect scarce minerals with known properties. The topics of alien biochemistry and extraterrestrial minerals are not often taught in the classroom. The pairing works well, however, for chemical outreach because it shows students how to bring divergent thoughts together to solve problems and, therefore, encourages creative chemical thinking.

This article analyses the importance of the language of chemistry in the construction, communication and learning of this scientific subject. Some of the most relevant difficulties of the language of chemistry are highlighted. Among them we can find the high number of new terms as well as their different types, and also the scarce attention given by textbooks to the meaningful learning of new vocabulary. To these problems it must be added the lack of opportunities that students experience to produce scientific arguments in the chemistry classroom, which certainly is connected with the difficulty they face to develop higher order thinking skills. Some recommendations are suggested in order to improve the ability of students when talking, thinking, reading and writing chemistry.

In the educative context, the term competency is referred to an integration of knowledge, attitudes, and skills that allows the individual to successfully perform a set of functions. The generic competencies are those common to most professions that are transferable between different activities in one sector or organization. During the evaluation process, remains the need to know which ones are the competencies that teachers consider as fundamental. In order to identify the perception of the teachers about the hierarchy of desirable generic professional competencies, a questionnaire of 23 competencies was applied to 111 professors of the Department of Chemical and Biological Sciences (DCBC) of the University of Sonora (Mexico). This study showed a tendency to the development of competencies related to the learning processes and oriented towards a strong academic instruction. However, interpersonal competencies were placed on the last positions; this situation shows some weaknesses on the social component of education.

Indigo is one of the first examples of vat dyeing, being the reduction of the dye to its soluble form (leuco-indigo) the critical step of that process. A new method to address such reduction reaction has been tested which improves the overall results for the staining with this dye, at a didactic level in an Organic Chemistry laboratory practice. The innovation introduced consists of using a small sized round-bottom flask along with a balloon and a needle to release the inner overpressure. Compared to the traditional process, the new method allows for the reduction at lower temperatures (30 °C vs. 66 °C) and a more homogeneous fabric dyeing.

Pre-service secondary and High School teachers were asked to rank some chemistry tasks, considering the level of proximity to daily context and level of problematization, in order to analyse their view of contextualization and problematization. Their answers allow us to group them in clusters, and the analysis of their composition give us some characteristics of each profile: some of them think that all of the tasks were a problem and everyday tasks, others identify everyday problems with any material which doesńt belong to a lab and problems any task which entails an action (measure, explain…). These profiles are of special relevance to teacher training to promote contextualization and scientific inquiry.