Chemistry Teachers Enhance Their Knowledge in Contemporary Scientific Areas

Traditionally, most teachers, both during their pre-service training as well as during their in-service experience, are exposed to only the conceptual structure and processes of chemistry. However, teaching chemistry most effectively necessitates both content knowledge as well as pedagogical content knowledge. Regarding the content knowledge, it is suggested that in the teaching and learning of chemistry, students should be exposed to recent investigations, namely the “frontiers of chemistry,” as well as inquiry-based problems. This approach to high school chemistry places great demands on chemistry teachers. In order to cope with the problems mentioned above, a special program for enhancing chemistry teachers’ content knowledge as well as their pedagogical knowledge was launched at the Weizmann Institute of Science. The program, which was designed for chemistry teachers, consists of three steps, in which the teachers attend (1) course lectures together with the regular MSc students, (2) a follow-up tutoring lesson which was prepared especially for teachers by one of the staff scientists and elaborates on the course lecture, and (3) a workshop coordinated by a researcher from the science teaching group, in order to apply the scientific knowledge to the educational field.