ALBERT

Notes: Abstract We all participate in a variety of groups as part of our daily lives, from families to social and work communities. As chemists, we are part of our college departments, our professional societies, our research groups, and so on. In graduate and undergraduate school, some of us formed peer study groups in response to the demands of those other groups that we were a part of: our formal courses. We know we are not unique in this. The popular culture, at least, is filled with portrayals of medical, law, and business students who must divide responsibility for learning a daunting amount of course material and who then teach one another as a part of their learning. Graduate research groups in chemistry are generally highly structured by their research directors where community issues are involved (group meetings and assignments, shared equipment, and representatives who obtain specialized skills such as crystallography or mass spectrometry), and move towards a less authoritative structure when developing individual initiative is the goal. Individuals depend on (and learn with) one another in all kinds of educational situations. In order to emphasize this idea, Bruffee [1] advocates the use of a phrase attributed to John Dewey: “living an associated life.” As Bruffee describes it, formal education in America has been based on a philosophy of associated learning since at least the time of Benjamin Franklin. We all live and learn in an associated way. Differences in interactions vary according to the nature of a group’s structure (and sometimes, although not as often, to an individual’s degree of dissociation from the group).

Notes: Abstract What is the value that comes from consciously and explicitly linking what we know about chemistry with what we do in the classroom? It is tempting to dismiss this question because we are uncomfortable with the implication that there are times when what we do in the classroom is not informed by our personal understanding of chemistry. Yet instructors of introductory chemistry courses often lack the personal understanding, especially the kind that comes from laboratory experience, for significant parts of the course. An experienced general chemistry instructor, for example, probably understands the practical expectations of teaching this subject better than anyone who has recently graduated with a Ph.D. in physical or inorganic chemistry. Although the merits of this situation are worth reflecting on at another time, a reasonable operational assumption is that a substantial portion of the introductory program is defined by its own existence rather than as an identifiable area of specialization. The general chemistry curriculum is flexible to the degree that it can accommodate a variety of backgrounds in its instructors, yet it is constrained by the historical inertia that has defined it. To a lesser yet still significant extent, beginning instructors of organic chemistry face the same problem when their understanding of more specialized topics (such as the synthesis of heterocyclic compounds, transition metal organometallics, carbohydrate and peptide chemistry) is limited by their inexperience in those areas. Organic chemists might have only studied these topics as a part of their own introductory or intermediate instruction, and the textbook in use could be their primary source of information. Consequently, introductory chemistry instruction is filled with its own “urban myths”, or perhaps they are parables [1] passed down from author to author, about chemical phenomena that may or may not stand up to the scrutiny of contemporary understanding. Sometimes this is by design; for instance, demonstrating some general features about macroscopic properties can be done by using simplifications like the ideal gas assumptions or with the use of concentration instead of activity. Intentional simplifications that use less sophisticated models to explain phenomena at an adequate level of complexity are commonplace (in fact, this is not a bad interpretation of Occam’s Razor as it applies to science in general). This may be analogous to the way our colleagues in physics begin college instruction with Newtonian mechanics, or the way chemists can successfully use valence bond models for molecular structure to do a prodigious amount of chemistry without ever invoking a Hamiltonian operator. Problems can arise, however, whenever an instructor’s depth of understanding of a subject is only marginally different than the simplified version of it. Agassi [2] offers a sobering view on the way some writers of introductory textbooks “mislead the innocent reader” (implying that unwary instructors will sometimes mislead learners). He laments that individuals who ultimately choose science do so in spite of their formal education and he refers to them as “those who survive the injury of the science textbook.”

Notes: Abstract Although its origins arise from confidential information, this article emerges from an area gray enough - important enough - to make the author (hereafter: I) comfortable with the context and sufficiently cautious to clear the content with the National Science Foundation. Intrigued? Let me explain. My premise is that the way that grant proposals are written is representative of the way that a group of potentially leading-edge scholars

Notes: Abstract The collective memory of the work of undergraduate student clubs is often fleeting, perhaps even more so than the memory of some academic faculty committees! Unlike fraternal organizations, with which members still identify long after they leave their student years, undergraduate students in preprofessional clubs more naturally dis-identify with their organizations once they

Notes: Abstract Following the tenets of a re-integrative philosophical framework for curriculum design and educational objectives, we provide strategies that describe our effort to change the educational experience of beginning college students in introductory chemistry. We focus on the explicit connection between instructional goals and practices. For instructors and students, whom we view as collaborators in learning, we address how mental models for instruction and information can affect the classroom environment. We also describe a series of classroom, laboratory, and outside-of-class tasks that are intended to promote meaningful engagement by individual students within the context of these recommendations.

Notes: Abstract Many instructors have sincerely accepted problem solving and critical thinking as instructional objectives. This kind of language, especially notions of the liberal-arts values of taking college classes, is used in compelling ‘first day of class’ pep talks. Increasing the scientific literacy of an educated voting citizenry has also been persistent ‘Day 1’ rhetoric, beginning with preparing students in the post-War Atomic Age and continuing through today’s concern for environmental and biotechnological issues. Unfortunately, too often little happens on days 2 through 40 (a typical number of class meetings in a semester) to fulfill the expectations and promises laid out on the first day. Why is this connection so difficult to achieve? Part of the answer can be found in the difference between the intellectual change that characterizes Day 1 when an instructor may possess the knowledge (skill) for what needs to be done and the behavioral changes (will) that are needed on Days 2-to-40. A brief historical application of these ideas as they pertain to the current cycle of chemical education reform is provided.