Training of Future Chemistry Teachers by a Historical / STEAM Approach Starting from the Visit to an Historical Science Museum
From Firenze University Press Journal: Substantia
Valentina Domenici, Department of Chemistry and Industrial Chemistry, University of Pisa
Non-formal learning and teaching are considered important aspects in science education as well as in chemistry education. Since the European Community has recognized the role of life-long learning and its impact on the education of aware citizens, non-formal contexts started deserving the attention of scientists dealing with education and in particular science education. Among non-formal contexts, science museums5–8 and scientific festivals, as typical example of contexts hosting open-science and outreach activities, were the object of several research studies focusing on their role in increasing the scientific literacy and the engagement of students toward science. Several papers, published in the recent years, show that out-of-school programs and outreach activities designed for children, families and/or for school students are effective in terms of acquired knowledges and skills in specific topics about science and technology.
Traditional science museums, historical collections linked to high schools or universities and interactive science centres are nowadays strongly connected with schools of any levels, from primary to high schools, and they have developed numerous activities, mainly laborato-rial and interactive ones, where science is presented in its relationship with Society and with other disciplines. This approach is an effective alternative to the more tra-ditional and scholastic ways of teaching science through its concepts, laws and more formal aspects. On the other hand, science teachers’ training is now focused on a more multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach, which is also referred to as the so-called STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) teaching and learning philosophy. According to this idea, students are encouraged to ‘think as a scientist’, developing high order thinking skills, such as the ability to solve complex problems by using knowledges and competences typical of different disciplines. In the recent years, this teaching method evolved towards the STEAM approach, which includes ‘Arts’ to the STEM. However, the letter ‘A’ in the STEAM acronym has a more general meaning: it can be extended to all human disciplines, such as music, history and languages. The basic idea of this teaching and learning method is that a multidisciplinary approach, combining scientific and logical thinking with creativity and multiple intelligences, can help students to under-stand the complexity of the real World and possibly find new solutions to everyday life problems. This teaching approach has influenced chemistry education, too. The role of human disciplines, such as history and philosophy, as well as the multidisciplinary approach and the use of contextual or situated edu-cational methods to teach chemistry at high school and undergraduate levels can be related to well-known chemistry education models, such the tetrahedral model proposed first by Peter Mahaffy and then structured and reinterpreted by Talanquer and Sjostrom, who added relevance dimensions and explained different levels of chemistry understanding and implications in chemistry education. Within the tetrahedral chemistry education model and its variants, teachers are invited to analyse different facets of chemistry education, such as the pedagogical, sociological, ethical, historical and philosophical ones, when working with their students. In line with this model, the use of historical approaches to teach chemistry at different school and university levels and the introduction of specific courses of ‘history of chemistry’ and ‘chemistry, ethics and society’ in the curriculum of future chemists represent additional elements of novelty in chemistry education.
Based on these premises, historical science museums and collections of historical objects, such as glassware, scientific instruments, historical books and reactants, as well as ancient artifacts, acquire novel roles and values for chemistry teachers who can take advantage of such contexts to teach specific chemical topics and try to engage them with more interactive teaching methods. In this paper, a pilot educational project40 experi-mented upon in the frame of the course of ‘Funda-ments and methods of chemistry education’ held at the University of Pisa (Italy) during the academic year 2019–2020, and aimed to train future chemistry teachers, is reported. The details of the methodology optimized and experimented within this course of chemistry education are reported and discussed in a previous paper. Here, the main steps of the teach-ing method and the pilot educational project, from the visit to the Museum ‘Galileo’ in Florence (Italy) to the design of educational laboratorial activities by the undergraduate students, are described and commented on. Emphasis will be given to the role of historical scientific collections, such as the Galilean thermoscopes and other historical thermometers, in stimulating the creativity and higher order thinking skills in future chemistry teachers.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/Substantia-1755
Read Full Text: https://riviste.fupress.net/index.php/subs/article/view/1755
