TY - JOUR
T1 - Lessons from a Pandemic
T2 - Educating for Complexity, Change, Uncertainty, Vulnerability, and Resilience
AU - Talanquer, Vicente
AU - Bucat, Robert
AU - Tasker, Roy
AU - Mahaffy, Peter G.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
PY - 2020/9/8
Y1 - 2020/9/8
N2 - The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed many aspects of our world including the way we teach chemistry. Our emergence from the pandemic provides an opportunity for deep reflection and intentional action about what we teach, and why, as well as how we facilitate student learning. Focusing on foundational postsecondary chemistry courses, we suggest that we cannot simply return to "normal"practice but need to design and implement new ways of teaching and learning based on fundamentally reimagined learning outcomes for our courses that equip students for life after the rupture they have experienced. We recommend that new learning objectives should be guided both by an analysis of existing global challenges and the types of understandings and practices needed to confront them, and by research-based frameworks that provide insights into important areas of knowledge, skill, and attitude development. We identify a core set of competencies along three major dimensions (crosscutting reasoning, core understandings, and fundamental practices) that we believe should guide the design, implementation, and evaluation of chemistry curricula, teaching practices, and assessments in foundational courses for science and engineering majors. The proposed framework adopts systems thinking as the underpinning form of reasoning that students should develop to analyze and comprehend complex global systems and phenomena.
AB - The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed many aspects of our world including the way we teach chemistry. Our emergence from the pandemic provides an opportunity for deep reflection and intentional action about what we teach, and why, as well as how we facilitate student learning. Focusing on foundational postsecondary chemistry courses, we suggest that we cannot simply return to "normal"practice but need to design and implement new ways of teaching and learning based on fundamentally reimagined learning outcomes for our courses that equip students for life after the rupture they have experienced. We recommend that new learning objectives should be guided both by an analysis of existing global challenges and the types of understandings and practices needed to confront them, and by research-based frameworks that provide insights into important areas of knowledge, skill, and attitude development. We identify a core set of competencies along three major dimensions (crosscutting reasoning, core understandings, and fundamental practices) that we believe should guide the design, implementation, and evaluation of chemistry curricula, teaching practices, and assessments in foundational courses for science and engineering majors. The proposed framework adopts systems thinking as the underpinning form of reasoning that students should develop to analyze and comprehend complex global systems and phenomena.
KW - Applications of Chemistry
KW - Curriculum
KW - Environmental Chemistry
KW - First-Year Undergraduate/General
KW - Interdisciplinary
KW - Problem Solving/Decision Making
KW - Second-Year Undergraduate
KW - Sustainability
KW - Systems Thinking
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UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85090992960&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00627
DO - 10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00627
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85090992960
SN - 0021-9584
VL - 97
SP - 2696
EP - 2700
JO - Journal of Chemical Education
JF - Journal of Chemical Education
IS - 9
ER -