Participants at the workshop.SACI/ACS Chemistry Teacher Workshops
A series of three-day workshops titled: “Chemistry Classroom Activities” was organised by the South African Chemical Institute (SACI) in conjunction with the American Chemical Society (ACS).
The workshops, aimed at chemistry educators from secondary institutions, were held in Durban, Pretoria and Cape Town and formed part of the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the two societies at Inorganic 2013 in Durban.
The Durban workshop was facilitated by Dr Jerry Bell of the ACS who is a Faculty Associate in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States where he works with the Wisconsin Initiative for Science Literacy.
Bell’s impressive career started at the University of California-Riverside (1962-67) and he then moved on to Simmons College (1967-93) before joining the American Association for the Advancement of Science as Director for Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education Programs in the Education and Human Resources Directorate (1992-99) and then the American Chemical Society (ACS) as Senior Scientist in the Education Division (1999-2009).
Chief Editor for the ACS textbook, Chemistry, his major professional interest has been science (chemical) education at all levels, especially the use of hands-on approaches to teaching and learning.
In 2010, Simmons College awarded Bell Emeritus status.
The KwaZulu-Natal Section was privileged to host the first of the workshops at UKZN’s School of Chemistry and Physics. Its goals were to enhance and enrich secondary chemistry teachers’ knowledge of and interrelationships among chemical concepts and their consequences through engagement in activities, discussion, and analyses that demonstrate how lessons on these concepts can be presented in a way that stimulates student thinking and prompts exploration of the complexity of the concepts.
Professor Bice Martincigh of the School of Chemistry and Physics said: ‘The content and structure of the workshop drew on several decades of experience the American Chemical Society has in activity-based curricula development.’
A total of 24 teachers from the KwaZulu-Natal region attended with topics covered including electrostatics, bonding, chemical kinetics, energy changes and climate change. From the responses received the educators appear to have found the workshop extremely valuable, effective and useful for their everyday teaching.
Comments from the participants included:
* ‘Thanks for the great workshop! One of the best chemistry workshops I have yet attended.’
* ‘Introduced unique and innovative ways of approaching and teaching established concepts.’
* ‘The ability to conduct experiments in the classroom in such a simplified manner was excellent and eye-opening.’
Martincigh said: ‘We want to especially thank Dr Jerry Bell for coming all the way to South Africa to run these workshops and our sponsors - SACI, ACS, proSET, UKZN and the UKZN Teaching and Learning Office - who made this workshop possible. The SACI KZN Section also thanks the staff of the School of Chemistry and Physics for assistance, and UKZN for sponsoring the delegate bags.’
Leena Rajpal