Laboratory Exercises in e-Learning Environment. Advanced Kitchen Chemistry

New laboratory exercises are developed, key element is that they can be done at home. The goal of their development is to provide another option aside for the exercises provided in the textbook. The experiments given are on the topics of enthalpy of processes and factors affecting the reaction rate. The new exercises are easy for the students, the results are consistent and close to theoretical, and achieve the base goals of the original experiments.

Kitchen chemistry course for chemistry education students: influences on chemistry teaching and teacher education – a multiple case study

This study introduces the Kitchen Chemistry (KC) course and its influences on chemistry education as a whole. KC is considered to be a life-relevant learning environment that engages learners in science through the pursuit of personally relevant and meaningful goals. KC, as a form of interdisciplinary learning, aims to develop boundary-crossing skills and to support the development of pupils’ scientific thinking. The purpose of this research was to determine how KC as a context-based teaching approach applies to chemistry education and what it offers to chemistry teaching and teacher education. We found that KC gave lower secondary school pupils the opportunity to understand the chemical phenomena in a familiar context. Teachers of visiting groups saw that integration is the challenge: pupils often see the subjects of chemistry and home economics as separate entities. The chemistry education students highlighted real-world connections to chemistry concepts and contexts. They also found KC to be an interesting form of teaching chemistry. According to the KC course teachers, the students were motivated and excited, and provided positive feedback on the course. These findings suggest that teachers and teacher education students need to be guided in actively using integration.