Guests of the chemistry didactics classes - a step towards planning interdisciplinary topics

Abstract

During the previous two decades we established the practice to invite the experts from different fields as guests of the Chemistry Didactics classes at the Faculty of Chemistry University of Belgrade. We believed that this practice would help students to develop their communication and collaborative skills with experts from other disciplines. Moreover, it helps them to think from different perspectives about topics that could be relevant for youth education, their future professional orientation, and society, and enables them to better prepare for the planning and realization of interdisciplinary approach in their future classrooms. In this presentation we will describe a workshop which was realized in cooperation with geographers. This workshop encompassed the students, future chemistry teachers, at their final years of study. The workshop had several parts. An important part related to the production of questions which could be answered through the cooperation of chemists and geographers. After that the importance of these questions was discussed within the framework of individual, societal and vocational relevance (Eilks and Hofstein, 2015) related to the youth education and their future decision-making in everyday life, better integration into society and professional orientation. The final part was associated with the formulation of topic that could be realized by interdisciplinary approach. This workshop can serve as a model of work for the future chemistry teachers, of how they can involve different specialists in their chemistry classes in order to make their lessons more relevant to youth. References: Eilks, I. and Hofstein, A. (2015). From some historical reflections on the issue of relevance of chemistry education towards a model and an advance organizer – a prologue In Eilks I. and Hofstein A. (Eds.), Relevant Chemistry Education From Theory to Practice (2−10). Roterdam: Sense Publishers.