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Meeting important educational goals for chemistry through service-learning
- Source :
- Chemistry Education Research and Practice. 19:973-982
- Publication Year :
- 2018
- Publisher :
- Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), 2018.
-
Abstract
- This paper describes a service-learning course in Chemistry Honours at Rhodes University in South Africa. Students visit two schools in different settings, where they present a lecture-demonstration, entitled ‘A Pollutant's Tale’, and two hands-on experiments to school learners. The students are assessed on their learnings as seen through their own reflections on the activities in reflective journals. The reflections from 27 students over four years of the course were analysed to investigate to what extent the educational goals of the course were being met. Six broad themes emerged from student reflections: (1) social awareness; (2) civic responsibility; (3) challenging beliefs; (4) enhanced understanding of science communication and demonstration skills; (5) personal growth; and, (6) evaluating the service-learning experience. In our discussion of these themes, we suggest that through service-learning, students have learnt to do things differently in Chemistry: they have learnt about society beyond the laboratory and beyond their previous life-experiences. Importantly, the students have undergone personal development and picked up critical skills which they will need when traversing life and its challenges – such as, working with and learning from diverse groups of people, teamwork and learning to cope in stressful situations. The paper will be of particular interest to those who are involved in chemistry teaching in both schools and higher education institutions, as well as those interested in service-learning as a pedagogical tool, community and civic engagement and the development of transferable skills in chemistry students.
- Subjects :
- Teamwork
Medical education
Higher education
010405 organic chemistry
business.industry
media_common.quotation_subject
05 social sciences
Service-learning
050301 education
01 natural sciences
0104 chemical sciences
Education
Personal development
Social group
Chemistry (miscellaneous)
ComputingMilieux_COMPUTERSANDEDUCATION
Transferable skills analysis
Civic engagement
Social consciousness
Psychology
business
0503 education
media_common
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 17561108 and 11094028
- Volume :
- 19
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Chemistry Education Research and Practice
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........718a1ae6f4a093557f9cbbb7a5a00a4f
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1039/c8rp00103k