The Nature of the Chemical Concept

One of my books is

This book is part of the RSC Advances in Chemistry Education series.

The features of chemistry that make it such a fascinating and engaging subject to teach also contribute to it being a challenging subject for many learners. Chemistry draws upon a wide range of abstract concepts, which are embedded in a large body of theoretical knowledge. As a science, chemistry offers ideas that are the products of scientists' creative imaginations, and yet which are motivated and constrained by observations of natural phenomena.

Chemistry is often discussed and taught largely in terms of non-observable theoretical entities – such as molecules and electrons and orbitals – which probably seem as familiar and real to a chemistry teacher as Bunsen burners: and, yet, comprise a realm as alien and strange to many students as some learners' own alternative conceptions ('misconceptions') may appear to the teacher.

All chemistry teachers know that chemistry is a conceptual subject, especially at the upper end of secondary school and at university level, and that some students struggle to understand many chemical ideas. This book offers a step-by-step analysis and discussion of just why some students find chemistry difficult, by examining the nature of chemistry concepts, and how they are communicated and learnt. The book considers the idea of concepts itself; draws upon case studies of how canonical chemical concepts have developed; explores how chemical concepts become represented in curriculum and in classroom teaching; and discusses how conceptual learning and development occurs. This book will be invaluable to anyone interested in teaching and learning and offers guidance to teachers looking to make sense of, and respond to, the challenges of teaching chemistry.

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Chapters:

1. The challenge of teaching and learning chemical concept
2. What kind of things are concepts?
3. What kinds of concepts are important in chemistry?
4. Concepts as knowledge
5. The origin of a chemical concept: The ongoing discovery of potassium
6. Conceptualising acids: Reimagining a class of substances
7. Concepts and ontology: what kind of things exist in the world of chemistry?
8. Chemical meta-concepts: Imagining the relationships between chemical concepts
9. Accessing chemical concepts for teaching and learning
10. How are chemical concepts represented in the curriculum?
11. How are chemical concepts communicated?
12. How are chemical concepts represented in teaching?
13. How do students acquire concepts?
14. What is the nature of students' conceptions?
15. How do students' concepts develop?"
16. Lessons for chemistry education

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My Faculty asked an external reviewer * to provide an evaluation of the book, and I was provided with this feedback.

"This is an extraordinary book. It is ostensibly about the various 'misconceptions' young and inexperienced learners can encounter when seeking to engage with and master chemical concepts. It is also about the many difficulties (conceptual and otherwise) the greater majority of their teachers need to grapple with in communicating what, for the most part, can seem like pretty abstract material. The stalking horse throughout the book is the Chemistry community's conventional wisdom (its 'canonical knowledge') that is widely assumed to constitute and structure the school subject of Chemistry, the ways in which it should be taught and, at the same time, the myriad ways in which it can turn out to be its own worst enemy when it comes to engaging the greater majority of learners.

These are the starting and end points but on the way the reader is taken on a journey which includes amongst other things: explanations of some central but potentially complex chemical phenomena; analysis of the philosophical nature of such concepts and their often 'fuzzy' and contested status; the various challenges posed for effective teaching and learning; assumptions underlying the construction of standard chemical curricula; insights into the ways in which learners grapple with key concepts; as well as various suggestions about how the whole apparatus of communicating the subject's 'core' might be improved.

This is a very substantial book (16 chapters, 377 pages) and a major piece of scholarship ranging widely across all aspects of its subject matter, written in highly accessible language. Amongst other things it synthesises research, offers philosophical insights into the potentially ambiguous nature of chemical knowledge, introduces new evidence, provides a critique of how the subject is delivered, and identifies the numerous problems which can frustrate good educational research and the creation of new pedagogic knowledge.

The book is published by the Royal Society of Chemistry so could easily be perceived as somewhat niche. However, it is likely to be of interest not just to chemistry teachers but to the wider science teaching community, especially at secondary school level. It is, in short, a tour de force and a compelling study with wider implications for other school science subjects."

Independent evaluation carried out for the University of Cambridge

* The evaluation was requested as part of preparation for REF21 – the Research Excellence Framework that evaluates the quality of research in British Universities. Universities submit examples of research outputs (journal papers, books, etc.) which are rated though a vast (expensive and time-consuming) bureaucratic peer review process leading to ratings for university departments. The ratings depend in large part on the proportion of faculty 'returned' as long as the submitted work is highly rated. Universities have to decide which staff work to submit. Because the REF ratings are considered very significant, Universities spend a good deal of time and effort on developing systems intended to maximise outcomes. As part of this process, my Faculty asked someone (I was not told who) they considered a suitable external expert to evaluate my book.