We are, of course, using ducks to provide assistance to the students. What had constantly puzzled me is the lack of competence of many of the students who have obtained a top grade in chemistry to work with basic mathematics in a chemistry context. It was whilst pondering this as I explained logarithms for the nth time that I saw on the desk a document which will be familiar to teachers and students alike.
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| Part of the SQA formula book |
If you are trying to find an equation that is missing then you are on the wrong track. It is the way the information is presented, and having talked to many students and teachers in post-16 pre-HE education this is symptomatic of science across the board.
THERE ARE NO UNITS!
No, not one. Every equation is given as a series of labels to be learned. A series of facts to be put in the correct place. Without units there is no possibility of understanding the relationship between for example molarity, mass and volume. Or when a number is a ratio and can therefore be scaled, an absolute quantity and can be added, and so on.
With units underpinning the equations then they pretty much explain themselves. Instead of learning different rearranged equations, learn the units and then you can construct whichever equations you want.
So if you are a post-16 secondary science teacher, wondering about how best to prepare your students for university, please include the units. Teach them to use the units - an approach called dimensional analysis. Units balance and give understanding to the labels. So often we come across students who switch off because they recognise the labels and think they know the topic, but they have no understanding of the meaning behind those labels and then fail dismally when asked to explain, rather than recite.
Is this endemic across secondary science? I do hope not but I fear it might be. I suggest that the problem arises from a curriculum that is so packed the students have no time to think and play with the data, just scarcely enough time to hear, memorise and recite. It is frustrating for the teacher and the university, and does not serve the student well. In the words of one of my colleagues,we need to 'cover less, uncover more'. Give the students time and space to think.
The driver for this has to be the SQA and its English counterparts. Individual teachers do the best they can but have no time or space to deviate from the curriculum dictated gavage of factoids and labels. Change the curriculum, look at the transferable skills students should be getting from post 16 study and teach to deliver those, not some idealistic and unachievable tick box of topics.
The lack of units is not the cause here - it is a symptom. And a very worrying one at that.
Are you a secondary science teacher? Does this resonate with you or have I completely misread this? Let me know in the comments below.
Update:
It isn't that bad, it's worse. I met today with a young former teacher who left the profession at the end of the last academic year. She taught upper level chemistry and was criticised for including units in her teaching. She had been doing exactly what I wish schools would do, teaching the relationships between quantities by using units to derive equations that had not been adequately memorised. The rationale given was that if you give a correct answer with the correct units you get a mark. If the answer is correct but includes no units then you get the same mark, but if the number is correct but the units are wrong you get no mark. So it is safer to teach the students to not use units or they may be penalised. What a mad world we live in. It is increasingly clear that it is the short sightedness of a tick box exam mentality that is doing us and our students a disservice, and requiring that we retrain students in practices they should be using from day 1.
