The two “path-breakers” in this effort were Edward Frankland and Henry Armstrong in England “who both built upon the German experience and precedent of Liebig’s great teaching laboratory at Giessen”. The author also mentions Cannizzaro as one who had significant contributions to chemistry teaching, “based upon a standard two-volume molecule derived from Avogadro’s hypothesis, that equal volumes of gases at the same temperature and pressure contained the same number of molecules”. A.W. Hoffman was also mentioned for his reform of elementary teaching of chemistry and innovations on facilitating chemical calculations derived from chemical equations.
Frankland’s State-Sponsored Chemistry: Frankland believed in the importance of science education in the “future professionalization” of science. Most of his vision was put into practice when he became chief examiner of the state Department of Science and Art. There were two important facets to Frankland’s contributions as an educator: his innovative teaching and organization of chemistry facts illustrated in his textbook Lecture Notes for Chemical Students which he wrote to assist students in paying full attention to the lecture rather than focusing on taking down notes. The other was his influence on the teaching of chemistry through the development and improvement of examinations and his publication of the teaching textbook How to Teach Chemistry. Frankland’s disappointment at the poor performance of students on practical chemistry concepts was the catalyst for his efforts as the Department of Science and Art chief examiner to devise ways to improve the teaching of practical chemistry: securing state funding for lab facilities in science classes, requiring teachers to demonstrate experiments, and training chemistry teachers on how to do these demonstrations.
Frankland’s emphasis was on the more ‘economical’ method of lecture demonstrations that allowed students to ‘see’ the experiments. His predecessor Henry Armstrong was to take this one step farther, successfully bringing into education the ability for students to actually ‘do’ experiments. Armstrong's objection to the didactic teaching-centered method of learning drove him to advocate for and implement the heuristic method, “the child-centered method of learning through experience and experiment”. “‘Heuristic methods’, said Armstrong, ‘are methods which involve our placing students as far as possible in the attitude of the discoverer.’ What students found out for themselves was best remembered because then they truly understood. Moreover, because a student- investigator is genuinely interested and involved in finding a solution to a problem, they would learn about it more efficiently than if they were given the solution didactically.” He subsequently designed a new syllabus for beginning chemistry that “proceeds ‘systematically from the known to the unknown’. The author considers Armstrong's innovative heuristic method as a catalyst for the school laboratory movement: by 1902, the number of school laboratories in Great Britain went from 150 to over 1,000.
Twentieth-Century Developments in Teaching: In the USA, the American Chemical Society played a big role in directing how chemistry was taught in schools. In the 1920’s, high school chemistry was organized into inorganic, organic, and physical chemistry including laboratory analysis. In the 1930’s, the ACS provided a set of minimum standards , implemented an accreditation process, and published a standardized set of examination questions that ensured uniformity in the teaching of chemistry across the nation. “The correlation of mathematics and science, however, remained a particularly American problem.” By the 20th century, more and more advanced mathematical knowledge became necessary to understand the new chemical concepts being discovered and subsequently included in the chemical education syllabus. Responses from educators and chemists to bridge this gap include the addition of trigonometry and calculus in the British education system and the publication of mathematics textbooks for the study of science. Furthermore, in America, the launching of the Russian space shuttle Sputnik triggered a movement to improve science education. The Chemistry faction responded with two new movements, the Chemical Bond Approach and the CHEM Study program. The revised curricula offered by both these programs were disseminated internationally. In 1967, these two programs and the Nuffield curriculum program in Great Britain “all came to fruition” after international meetings and the resulting “attitude towards chemistry teaching can be summed up as follows: when teaching the chemistry of the atmosphere, it is no longer necessary to show students how to prepare oxygen and nitrogen; instead take them straight from gas cylinders just like any other chemical”. It was later on determined that this evolved curriculum only worked best with the “brighter students”. In the 1970’s, researchers also found that students brought their own pre- and misconceptions to the classroom and the role of chemical education became that of facilitating the “unlearning a prior view and perceiving it anew”. Also, new findings on the psychology of learning and a ‘more critical philosophy and sociology of science’ further undermined the discovery method and there was a new vision to create a “science for all” rather than a “science for the few”.
The last section in chapter focused on the evolution of the laboratory facility. The primary focus given by Frankland and Armstrong on a strong laboratory component in chemical education in the 19th century and subsequent curriculum reforms in the 20th century placed a huge demand on laboratory facilities, previously only required by research programs since Liebig’s time. The design specifications of chemical laboratories have always been driven by the following problems and needs: artificial ventilation due to production of noxious and sometimes dangerous fumes and liquids, gas, water, and drains for discarding waste. In 1862, passage of the Morrill Land Act, donating federal lands to create private or state engineering and agricultural laboratories in America, led to a major expansion in science laboratories, allowing Universities of Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, and Cornell among others to become centers of science teaching and research. The cost of building and equipping a laboratory rose in the 20th century due to the introduction of new equipment. Between the two world wars, there was a second wave of laboratory building and extension. Post second world war expansion of British universities led to new design for labs and experimentation with new material. Based on changing number of students and scientific curriculum and the need for flexibility, some of the considerations were: need for air conditioning for mass spectrometry and spectroscopy and constant temperatures for chromatography; special constructions to protect from radioactive materials and hazardous chemicals; switching to longer peninsular surfaces from island benches for convenience and servicing; and redesign of the ‘fume cupboard’ which had the most specialized construction needs and was the “most awkward thing to deal with”. Lastly, it is worth noting the author’s note on the current (at time of writing in 1996) and future state of laboratory design, some of which had been realized: “The indications during the last thirty years are that designers, influenced by the special precautions needed for safe research, the availability of highly efficient ventilation systems, and the fact that laboratories in most countries fall within the orbit of much health and safety legislation, foresee a situation in which all actual experiments will be performed in centrally placed fume cupboards or shielded glove- boxes, leaving ‘the open benches as places for assembling equipment and placing reagent bottles, spare glassware, notebooks, etc.’”
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