Teaching (and Learning) Introductory Chemistry Courses in Context: A 40-Year Reflection

Resumen

When instructors teach chemistry using real-world contexts, they weave connections between chemistry and the large public issues of our world.  They also weave connections between chemistry and the smaller – but equally significant – personal issues in the lives of their students.  Teaching and learning chemistry in real world contexts is not new; rather, it is a well-established practice backed by research on how people learn.  What has one college chemistry instructor (and her students) learned over the past 40 years?  The answer to this question is multi-dimensional, involving teaching philosophy, learning outcomes, changing contexts, changing content, and bringing the content and the contexts together. In answering this question, this paper employs air quality and plastics as examples of two real-world contexts that can engage students in learning chemistry through the “big questions” in our world today.