History of chemistry in the pre-service chemistry teachers education

Abstract

History of chemistry could be an important part of the curriculum for pre-service chemistry teachers’ education. This allows them the deeper understanding of nature of science and scientific work, as well as to build a base for future planning the contextual approaches through which their school students could learn about nature of science. History of Chemistry is taught in the fourth year within the integrated academic studies curriculum (300 ECTS) for chemistry teachers’ education at the Faculty of Chemistry University of Belgrade. During the last three school years at the very beginning of the course of History of Chemistry the estimation of the knowledge of some historical facts, such as the scientific contribution of Robert Boyle, Henry Cavendish, Joseph Priestley, Antoine Lavoisier, John Dalton, Jöns Jacob Berzelius, Alessandro Volta, Michael Faraday was conducted. These scientists were chosen according to the previous analysis of the syllabuses of different secondary school and university chemistry and physics subjects. In this way, we were able to examine whether students pay attention to the work of scientists when they study various subjects from chemistry and physics domain. In addition, we asked the students whether they read texts from the history of science, what was the most important scientific discovery from their point of view, who was the most significant scientist in their opinion, whether they had a role model among scientists. Also, we asked students to describe an experiment that they knew from the history of science. The obtained results showed that students, future chemistry teachers, have developed certain attitudes about chemistry as a science, but they possess little knowledge about the scientific work of scientists. These findings are later useful for the lessons and workshops planning within the course of history of chemistry.