A Research Approach to Designing Chemistry Education using Authentic Practices as Contexts

Abstract

We discuss how to reduce the incongruence between the outcomes (both cognitive and affective) of the conventional secondary chemistry curriculum and what is to be attained: the meaningful connection of students’ learning to daily life and societal issues. This problem is addressed by a design study with one curriculum unit about “Water Quality”. With several research cycles using developmental research, we developed an emergent understanding about an instructional framework for curriculum units that embodies a coherent “need‐to‐know” principle and is based on authentic practices. Using this framework we show with some other examples how a context‐based chemistry curriculum can be constructed based on the developed “need‐to‐know” principle.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank their colleague Kees Klaassen for being part of the research team. They also want to express gratitude to all the contributors of the symposium on Context‐based Chemistry Education during the European Science Education Research Association (ESERA) conference in Barcelona 2005; they enjoyed the discussions and highly appreciated the feedback received on the paper. The authors are very grateful to Fred Lubben for his extensive feedback on language, terminology, and methodological issues.