Turning the Plurality of Chemistry into a Resource for Learning
A Core Competency of Chemistry Teachers
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21585752 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Andreas Nehring (0000-0002-8723-5552, Leibniz University Hannover, corresponding author), Sascha Schanze (0000-0002-5570-4991, Leibniz University Hannover) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 2051-2078 |
| Publication date | 2025-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Science & Education (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0926-7220 • E-ISSN: 1573-1901 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s11191-025-00624-5 |
| OpenAlex | W4407635437 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 91 |
Chemistry is a science that not only examines substances at different levels of abstraction and involves a wide multitude of cognitive and experimental operations, but also used and uses a variety of concepts and representations referring to the same term. At the same time, many studies on the professional competencies of teachers underline the importance of content knowledge as a prerequisite for pedagogical content knowledge and instructional quality for example. While these studies use a quantitative logic of more or less chemistry knowledge, this paper argues that teachers do not only have to understand chemical concepts but also have to be able to manage conceptual plurality. This involves explaining phenomena based on different concepts, comparing their explanatory power and their limitations, and reflecting upon their sometimes different ontological and epistemological status. We propose conceptual clarifications for acid–base chemistry, redox chemistry, and atomic and bonding models to indicate how plurality manifests itself in chemistry in the first place. On this basis, we derive five approaches showing how managing conceptual plurality in chemistry helps to support learning chemistry. Teachers are more likely to make adequate curricular decisions, to anticipate students’ conceptions, to support transitions between concepts meaningfully, or to foster epistemic cognition as a part of learning chemistry. We discuss these approaches as explanations for findings in the field of teachers’ professional competencies
Business · Chemistry Education · Core competency · Epistemology · Mathematics education · Chemistry · Computer Science · Education and Critical Thinking Development · Educational Strategies and Epistemologies · Psychology · Science Education and Pedagogy
Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding
Is Water H2O?
Generic dimensions of teaching quality
Reconceptualizing the Nature of Science for Science Education
Capturing and modeling the process of conceptual change
Pedagogical content knowledge and content knowledge of secondary mathematics teachers.
Scientific knowledge suppresses but does not supplant earlier intuitions
Accommodation of a scientific conception
Improving science teachers' conceptions of nature of science
Opening up the black box
Classroom observation frameworks for studying instructional quality
Chemistry is pluralistic
Scientific reasoning and views on the nature of scientific inquiry
Toward Understanding Science as a Whole
Revisiting the Conceptualisation of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK)
Those Who Understand
The relation between content-specific and general teacher knowledge and skills
Effects of Teachers’ Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching on Student Achievement
Knowledge and Teaching
Teachers' Mathematical Knowledge, Cognitive Activation in the Classroom, and Student Progress
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |