“Chemie im Kontext”: A symbiotic implementation of a context‐based teaching and learning approach

Abstract

“Chemie im Kontext” (ChiK) is a project that aims at the improvement of chemistry teaching at secondary school in Germany. Based on a framework that was derived from theories and empirical data on the teaching and learning of science, science education researchers and teachers work together on learning communities to transform this framework into teaching and learning practice. Funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and the participating federal states, such learning communities have developed and tried units for almost all topics for upper and lower secondary education. The accompanying research studies show different effects on students’ motivation: The ChiK units point out the relevance of chemistry, but the student‐oriented learning approach can also lead to a feeling of getting lost in the context. One reason might be seen in the result that teachers have put more emphasis on the realization of a good context than on the second important principle of ChiK—the development of basic concepts. However, data also showed that the learning communities have indeed inspired and supported the teachers to change their teaching towards a more context‐based and student‐oriented teaching. The continuing work will now especially focus on the improvement of facilitating the students with a better guideline, and on the development and assessment of different science competencies.