ISBN 978-91-7601-130-0ISSN 1650-8858

Karolina Brom

an C

hemistry: C

ontent, Context and C

hoices

Um

eå University 2015

Department of Science and Mathematics Education Umeå 2015

Chemistry: Content, Context and Choices Towards students’ higher order problem solving in upper secondary school Karolina Broman

Department of Science and Mathematics Education Umeå university, 901 87 Umeå www.nmd.umu.se

ISBN 978-91-7601-157-7

This thesis focuses on upper secondary students and their chemistry education. Students’ affective and cognitive responses to school chemistry are investigated and the results highlight positive students who have chosen to study post-compulsory chemistry, not only for their future higher education but also because of their enjoyment of chemistry. Students’ educational choices are related to their individual identities, and positive role models are found to be important for future career choices within chemistry. One outcome of exploring students’ learning outcomes was that students’ desire to connect chemistry content knowledge to everyday life, thus the research shifted towards context-based learning approaches and an analysis of students’ problem solving of context-based chemistry tasks. Today’s school chemistry often relies on rote memorisation and recall of facts which contradicts the idea of meaningful learning. Students therefore need to practice to solve open-ended conceptual chemistry problems to develop their higher order thinking.

10653_oms_KarolinaBroman_C_r11,99.pdf - 2015/01/07 14:07:28