Chemical Education Today

Award Address
Chemistry Teaching—Science or Alchemy?

1996 Brasted Lecture

A. H. Johnstone
Department of Chemistry, Glasgow University, Glasgow G12 8QQ, Scotland

Introduction: Is Chem-Ed Research? other words, we have a filtration system that enables us to
ignore a large part of sensory information and focus upon
Many of us who work in universities have two main what we consider to matter. To try to attend to everything
See https://pubs.acs.org/sharingguidelines for options on how to legitimately share published articles.

roles: as researcher and as teacher. The balance between would be an impossibility leading to confusion and break-
these varies from one institution to the other, and the ap- down.
proach to these roles can be very different. Some people see We then have to ask how the filter works. It must be
teaching as a chore which gets driven by what we already know and understand. Our pre-
in the way of research, while
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vious knowledge, biases, prejudices, preferences, likes and

You may be the others view their teaching as dislikes, and beliefs must all play a part. How else would
an exciting, creative, but often we anticipate and recognize the familiar or be caught out
provider of stimuli frustrating pursuit. Journals by a surprise?
during teaching, but such as this regularly carry ar- Although in any one country or culture much of this
how does the ticles describing some frontier will be held in common, each individual will have a unique
of chemical research along set of held knowledge and beliefs that mark us out as sepa-
student filter what with articles about teaching rate people and personalities.
you provide? innovation. Where the two Not only do we sense selectively, we also add, from ex-
types of communication differ perience, to our sensory infor-
is in their overt theoretical mation and “fill out” an oth-
stance. The research papers are copiously referenced to erwise incomplete sensory ex-
theories, held beliefs, hypotheses, and objective measure- perience. Take a look at Fig-
ment and seek to build on and extend what has been done ure 1. Is it just a lot of mean-
before. The teaching papers, on the other hand, are full of ingless blots? Try turning the
assertions, homespun wisdom, and ingenuity, and lack mea- page upside down. What now?
surement. The image is poor, but its
I am suggesting that the development of good teaching meaning is clearly being
and the pursuit of research have (or should have) essen- supplemented by what you al-
tially the same structure. We need some discipline in our ready know and “filled out” to
work to give it a clear focus, to be efficient in time and ef- a meaningful thing.
fort, and to have a direction that is more often right than Somewhere in our heads
wrong. We also need transferable outcomes that all can is a vast store of experience
share, to prevent the constant reinvention of fire. and knowledge, one function
The bulk of this paper is an attempt to do the gather- of which is to activate and
ing together of things we have all been aware of, perhaps control our perceptual filter.
intuitively, and to provide a working model for new research Stop and give some thought to
and development in chemical education. It is an attempt to the implication of this for Figure 1. Meaningless blots?
systematize what is known into a usable form, which might teaching and learning. You Turn the page upside down and
look again.
save us from confusing our enthusiasms for those of our stu- may be the provider of stimuli
dents and which will help us to go with the learning pro- during teaching, but how does
cess rather than across it or even against it! the student filter what you provide? If essential previous
The model draws upon the work of psychologists, edu- knowledge or concepts or language is missing, how will this
cationists, artificial intelligence workers, and dealers in affect what your students take out of what you say? Will
common sense. they miss essentials and grasp peripherals? Will they re-
member the bangs and pops of a demonstration and totally
Constructing a Model of Learning fail to grasp what you were trying to teach? Will your clever
graphics, trying to convey a three-dimensional structure on
In common with all living things, we are victims of our a flat computer screen, fail because the students are not fa-
environment, informed by our senses and reactions. How- miliar with drawing conventions or are incapable of gener-
ever, we have mechanisms by which we reduce the torrent ating three dimensions mentally from two-dimensional
of sensory stimuli to manageable proportions, attending to stimuli or even of seeing “near” things far away and vice
what seems to be important, interesting, or sensational. In versa (1)?

262 Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 74 No. 3 March 1997

 Chemical Education Today

Let us move deeper into the model by considering what There is a cutoff at the point where the effort of holding in
happens to the stimuli and information we admit through memory conflicts with the two thinking processes of trans-
the filter. It is thought to pass into a working space (or work- lating and rearranging. The shared space is overloaded. In
ing memory) where it is held and manipulated before being practice, it is so uncomfortable to work up to the limit that
rejected or passed on for storage. This part of the process- we operate below it, thus limiting the working space even
ing train has been thoroughly researched by workers such further. How well did you do in the experiment?
as Baddeley (2) and has given rise to a much more complex What are the implications of this for learning? Not only
model than I am presenting here. Readers might want to do students filter what we give them, but there is a limit
pursue this further, but a simplified version will suffice for on the quantity they can process and this also has a time
the present purpose. factor included. Does this mean that we are “crippled” by
The working space has two main functions. It is the con- this mental limitation or can we expand the working space?
scious part of the mind that is holding ideas and facts while The evidence is that we cannot expand the space, but we
it thinks about them. It is a shared holding and thinking can learn to use it more efficiently. A simple example is seen
space where new information coming through the filter con- when children are learning to read. At first every letter is a
sciously interacts piece of infor-
with itself and mation that
with information has to be pro-
drawn from long- cessed into
term memory store words and then
in order to “make into a sentence.
sense” (Fig. 2). To begin with,
H o w e v e r, H-O-R-S-E is
there is a draw- five pieces of in-
back. This work- formation, but
ing space is of soon the child
limited capacity rolls this to-
and I have writ- gether into one
ten about this be- word HORSE
fore in this Jour- (one piece of in-
nal (3). It is a lim- formation). In
ited shared space its first form,
in which there is Figure 2. Information processing model. the name is oc-
a tradeoff be- cupying five
tween what has to bits of space
be held in conscious memory and the processing activities but later it uses only one bit of space. Later whole sentences
required to handle it, transform it, manipulate it, and get can coalesce to one space, or at least the sense or message
it ready for storage in long-term memory store. If there is of the sentence takes only one space. This process is called
too much to hold, there is not enough space for processing; chunking and it is this that enables us to use the limited
if a lot of processing is required, we cannot store much. working space efficiently. However, chunking usually de-
It is easy to show this experimentally. Before you read pends upon some recognizable conceptual framework that
further, get two pieces of paper or card and cover the right enables us to draw on old, or systematize new, material. For
column of Table 1 and all of the left column except the first an experienced chemist, the recognition that ligands, bases,
line. Here is an experiment you can try on yourself. The and nucleophiles are related provides a helpful chunking
table shows a date in words, “Seventeenth of March”. Do device. Unfortunately new learners do not have these
this entirely in your head (no writing). Convert the date chunking devices in place and so are severely limited by
to numbers and arrange them in numerical order from their working space until they grow the concepts for them-
the smallest to the largest. Step one, memorize words and selves. This can be seen experimentally in the data in Fig-
look away. Step two, translate to numbers 1, 7, 3. Step ure 3.
three, rearrange numerically 1, 3, 7. That was easy! Now The data were provided by the Scottish Examination
uncover the next date for 2–3 seconds, cover it, and repeat Board on questions they had set on the mole. The sample
the processes above. Check your answer in the right col- size was 22,000 sixteen-year-olds. The vertical axis is the
umn. Work your way down column one until your “brain fraction of the student sample solving each question cor-
begins to hurt”. rectly. The horizontal axis is the sum of the pieces of infor-
mation provided in each question plus the additional pieces
Table 1. An Experiment to be recalled plus the processing steps required. For each
question, this total was agreed upon by a jury of teachers
SEVENTEENTH MARCH 13 7 and then checked by getting a group of students to solve
the problems out loud. The data for each question were then
TWENTY-THIRD OCTOBER 012 3 plotted against the two axes.
FIFTEENTH APRIL EIGHTY-NINE 14589 As one would expect, as the complexity increased the
TWENTY-SIXTH SEPTEMBER 126789 9
performance fell, but not linearly! Figure 3 shows the curve
NINETEEN EIGHTY-SEVEN of best fit, which looks very like a pH curve. It is the kind
of curve that fits any phenomenon in which a change of one
NINETEENTH DECEMBER 11122 48 9 condition seems to affect the other very little until there is
EIGHTEEN TWENTY-FOUR a sudden and drastic change. Here we see students having

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 Chemical Education Today

success with a cluster of questions of increasing complexity with thought, which may be slow, concentrated, two-way
until a point is reached after which most students fail. It between the working space and the long-term memory store
comes somewhere between five and six pieces of informa- and is what we like to believe takes place in academic think-
tion and operations. Check back to the experiment you did ing and learning and pervades problem solving.
on yourself with the dates. Was it somewhere near that What does the model indicate about storage and recall?
point when you started to make mistakes?
In the mole exam questions, students began to fail Storage and Recall
when working space was overloaded. I am not sure that the
working space capacity was what the exam was trying to On a simple level one could compare storage and recall
measure! You will notice, however, that the curve does not to a filing system in which new information is related to
drop to zero, because some students, about 10%, are show- existing files and placed there. If an incoming letter does
ing signs of chunking and being able to handle the complex- not fit the system, a new file is created and cross-referenced
ity. In this area, M-O-L-E has become MOLE for some. or indexed in some way to facilitate its retrieval. However,
So far the model (Fig. 2) has helped us to understand the problem arises at the retrieval stage because the op-
that idiosyncratic filtration takes place in the mind of each erator has to understand the system and the logic of the
student, by which the things we are teaching are deemed original filing. It is very difficult to take over someone else’s
to be important or unimportant, understandable or baffling, filing system and find things again. What is logical to one
interesting or boring. All of this is controlled by what is al- person may not be so logical to another.
ready held in long-term store. It has also pointed out the This brings us to a group of major thoughts. The first
limitations of working space in the information processing is that humans are pattern seekers. We try to relate new
train. In both of these areas, learning can go wrong or not things into an existing system to “make sense” of things.
take place at all. The discomfort of something which does not make sense,
However, the model takes us on one step more to look often leads to the rejection of the new idea.
at the linkages between working space and the long-term The second major thought is that we build our own
memory store. Look back to Figure 2 and you will see a knowledge from what is presented to us. Learning is not the
double arrow indicating a constant coming and going be- transfer of material from the head of the teacher to the head
tween the two areas. Processed material in the working of the learner intact. Learning is the reconstruction of ma-
space is passed to the long-term memory store for safekeep- terial, provided by the teacher, in the mind of the learner.
ing and at the same time material is being recalled from It is an idiosyncratic reconstruction of what the learner un-
the long-term store to help with the processing in working derstands, or thinks she understands of the new material
space. These are the processes of memorization and recall provided, tempered by the existing knowledge, beliefs, bi-
upon which so much of our functioning depends. ases, and misunderstandings in the mind of the learner.
There is the functional, knee-jerk kind of recall by Let us carry this thought further, and I am conscious
which we react quickly to external stimuli and little con- of the fact that readers will take different things out of what
scious thought is required. Much of this has to do with I say. Storage can take place in at least four ways.
physical skills such as walking, driving, or using a buret or
• The new knowledge finds a good fit to existing knowl-
a spectrophotometer (4). The other kind of recall has to do
edge and is merged to enrich the existing knowledge and
understanding (correctly filed).
• The new knowledge seems to find a good fit (or at least
a reasonable fit) with existing knowledge and is attached
and stored, but this may, in fact, be a misfit (a misfiling).
100%
These misfits often have a semantic origin. For example,
90% students were given a lecture on dipole moments, perma-
nent dipoles, and instant dipoles in molecules. At a later
Curve of Best Fit tutorial, the tutor was checking these definitions and found
80%
Fraction of Sample Solving the

that students had linked synonymously instant dipoles with

70% dipole moments. Further investigation showed that the con-
Question Correctly

fusion was arising between “instant” and “moment”. “Are

60% they not just the same?” asked the students! It was logical
to them, but it was not what the lecturer intended. The
50%
reader will have encountered many examples of this in ex-
40% amination scripts when students come up with ideas and
explanations we never taught them. These very useful rev-
30% elations (from a diagnostic point of view) are often lost in
multiple-choice questions where students have restricted
20% response possibilities. What we use as distracters are often
based on mislearning we assume they might have, rather
10% than what they actually have.
0% • Storage can often have a linear sequence built into it,
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 and that may be the sequence in which things were taught.
Lecture 5 comes before lecture 6 and so the content of 6 is
Complexity of Question
Figure 3. Curve of best fit. Students have success with a series of separated from 5 or 4 or 3. Students can only handle ques-
questions of increasing complexity until a certain point, after which tions if they have the same sequence. The algorithmic type
most students fail. of problem solving has a linear sequence that students can

264 Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 74 No. 3 March 1997

 Chemical Education Today

relate to, but problems that break this are seen to be diffi- as teachers not only to purvey the chemistry but also to en-
cult or impossible. In normal life we have sets of linear able and encourage students to learn how to learn. How this
memories that can be accessed in only one way. For ex- might be done
ample, to answer “What is the tenth letter in the alphabet?” will be set out in
involves going to A and counting through to J. “How many the section below. I believe that it is our
days are there in November?” will drive us to some jingle
like “Thirty days hath September…”. “In the first row of the responsibility as teachers not
The Model in
transition elements, which one has a d 6 configuration?” will Action only to purvey the chemistry
make us count from scandium, titanium, vanadium, etc.
but also to enable and
This type of memorization and retrieval is necessary, but I should like
often slow and awkward, needing a lot of effort. If the lin- to devote the rest encourage students to learn
earity can be broken down by spurs or branches, access be- of this paper to how to learn.
comes easier. The transition metal problem is reduced if we the application of
add to our chain the knowledge that manganese is the this model to real
middle element in the sequence with a d5 configuration. teaching situations in chemistry to illustrate its usefulness
Students need help with laying down such knowledge. and to give direction to our interests, enthusiasms, and re-
• The last type of memorization is that which occurs search.
when the learner can find no connection on which to attach It is probably a good idea to summarize what has been
the new knowledge. This is both hard to learn and almost said so far in the form of principles for teaching and learn-
impossible to retrieve. This is the kind of learning that ne- ing. My research team call these the Ten Educational Com-
cessitates walking up and down with a wet towel round the mandments. They stem directly or indirectly from the
head and chanting things over and over again. Learning is model.
painful and often a complete waste of time in that it is eas- 1. What you learn is controlled by what you already
ily lost or consciously rejected. It is the learning crammed know and understand.
in before an examination that is lost within an hour or so 2. How you learn is controlled by how you have learned
after the test. successfully in the past.
Ausubel (5) has grouped these types of learning between 3. If learning is to be meaningful it has to link on to ex-
two ends of a spectrum. The first, described above, in which isting knowledge and skills enriching and extending
new learning links correctly to old knowledge and under- both.
standing, is called meaningful learning. The last type, men- 4. The amount of material to be processed in unit time
tioned above, is called rote learning. At one extreme we have is limited.
good, well-integrated, branched, retrievable, and usable 5. Feedback and reassurance are necessary for comfort-
learning, while at the other extreme we have, at best, iso- able learning, and assessment should be humane.
lated and boxed learning that relates to nothing else in the 6. Cognizance should be taken of learning styles and
mind of the learner. However, a sympathetic and skillful motivation.
teacher, aware of the boxed learning, can help students to 7. Students should consolidate their learning by asking
interconnect boxes and convert rote to meaningful learning. themselves about what is going on in their own heads.
I can vividly recall one lecture on hard and soft acids and 8. There should be room for problem solving in its full-
bases, which brought so much—apparently disparate— est sense to exercise and strengthen linkages.
chemical knowledge together for me. If water is a hard base, 9. There should be room to create, defend, try out, and
hard acids must be the cations found in the sea. If I am to hypothesize.
put a metal transplant into a human body, that metal must 10. There should be opportunity given to teach (you don’t
not yield hard acid ions in this aqueous medium or corrosion really learn till you teach).
will set in. Hard bases tend to donate electrons through oxy-
On the way through the applications that follow I shall
gen or nitrogen (top of periodic table), while soft bases do-
refer back to these Ten Commandments and, through them,
nate through sulfur or phosphorus (lower in the table). Sud-
to the model.
denly a lot of things came together when I realized that
ligands were bases and so, often, were nucleophiles. This is
meaningful learning! In this situation retrieval is easy be- The Model Applied to Lectures
cause the cross-index system is now able to work along many
channels. I believe that although learning is idiosyncratic In a three-year study during which we tried to see lec-
and individual, students can be helped to learn by discuss- tures through the eyes of students, we were assisted by sev-
ing with them the content of the last few pages of this ar- enty students who let us have their lecture notes at the end
ticle. Without such help, students can imagine that learn- of a selection of lectures. We copied these and returned
ing chemistry is a rote process and this may be exacerbated them to the students. We also attended each lecture, re-
by the kind of testing we subject them to. This shallow corded it, and took a set of notes for ourselves. Our obser-
learning, as described by workers such as Entwistle (6), can vations plus the analysis of the students’ notes gave rise to
become a way of life for students who imagine that this is the following findings.
what chemistry is about. The interlinked, multidimensional The first was that most lecturers delivered about 5000
learning we described at the beginning is close to what words per 50-minute lecture. The student response to these
Entwistle describes as deep learning, but he adds the idea different lecturers was related to their lecturing style; their
that this requires a commitment on the part of the student rate of delivery, their humor, their use of visual aids, and
(and the teacher) to see this as a necessary and satisfying the vocabulary employed. However, the main factor was
condition for learning. I believe that it is our responsibility that of cues; how did they help students to separate noise

Vol. 74 No. 3 March 1997 • Journal of Chemical Education 265

Chemical Education Today

from signal. Some lecturers were very clear about what was to do, the number of important observations that have to
essential and what was peripheral, while others left the stu- be made (color changes, gases evolved, etc.), and the num-
dents to figure this out for themselves, with often disastrous ber of theoretical ideas that have to be recalled to make
consequences. sense of these observations and instructions. The total is
We found that students on average recorded between staggering! This part was less than one-tenth of what the
500 and 1000 words; between 10% students had to process in three
and 20% of what was said. But how hours. Is it any wonder that stu-
did they select that fraction? Will they remember the bangs and pops dents blindly processed only the in-
Clearly previous knowledge would structions and seldom recorded or
of a demonstration and totally fail to
enable them to decide what was im- interpreted the observations (com-
portant and made sense, and what grasp what you were trying to teach? mandment 4)?
was unimportant (commandment First-time, unprepared learn-
1). Their learning style was also im- ers are not in a position to process
portant; whether they were visual or verbal learners and laboratory experiences with understanding. It does not mat-
whether they could separate the essential from the ter if we use bucket scale or micro scale, the same funda-
peripheral (commandment 2). mental problem of overload remains. But notice what the
One of the main ways of coping was for students to model says (commandment 1). “What we already know and
work on the assumption that if the lecturer went to the understand controls what we learn.” This points to the
trouble of writing something on the blackboard, it must be sheer necessity of some kind of prelab to prepare the mind
important. Also the pace of writing on the blackboard was to recognize the expected changes, to be surprised when
slow enough to match the students’ recording pace. We ana- something different occurs, to have the requisite theory “at
lyzed the students’ notes to see how complete the black- the top of the head” to guide what is going to be experi-
board record was and found four categories: those who cop- enced. This kind of prelab is not “Read your manual before
ied, but did so inaccurately or incompletely; those who cop- you come” nor is it “Do a few calculations in advance”. It
ied the blackboard material only, but accurately; those who must be a more fundamental preparation involving revision
had a complete and accurate blackboard record but who also of theory, reacquaintance with skills, planning the experi-
had noted a fair amount of the verbal communication; and ment to some extent, discussion with members of a team
finally those who had complete, accurate blackboard notes about partition of labor, and so on. The student has to be
and also had elaborated them with cross references, aide convinced that the experiment is worth doing and that the
memoirs and comments. The performance of these students results will be important and informative. There has to be
in exams was recorded. Table 2 shows the average scores of some feeling of ownership to justify the time spent. The
the four groups on two exams. prelab may be a computer simulation to give the student a
There is an alarming connection between recording feel for the procedure and to explore the important vari-
pattern and exam outcome. They may not be related di- ables before going into the lab and doing the experiment.
rectly through cause and effect, but through some common One of our researchers conducted an experiment in-
skill that we did not isolate. volving prelabs and also postlabs. The latter were designed
A more realistic way to think of the lecture load is not to get students to use what had been learned in the lab to
in words, but in “units of sense”; for example, a formula, conduct another small experiment with no further instruc-
equation, structure, graph, or definition. On average, 130 tions. Each group consisted of 100 students. The control
such units were delivered per lecture with a range from 117 group used only the normal laboratory manual. In addition
to 160. At the lower end of this range students recorded on to using the normal lab manual, one group did a prelab, one
average 75% of the units; this fell to 52% for the upper end did a postlab, and one did both prelab and postlab. Demon-
of the range. In other words, the more information there strators (mainly graduate students) were asked to keep a
was to be processed, the less efficient the recording (com- diary of the frequency and nature of “thoughtless” questions
mandment 4) (7). There surely is a lesson here for lectur- they were asked by the students—for example “Where can
ers: giving more may mean learning less. I find 50% nitric acid?” when concentrated acid and water
were available. This was only one measurement among oth-
The Model Applied to Laboratories ers, but the results were all the same. The results for the
four groups are shown in the histograms in Figure 4.
The laboratory is the place for information overload (8, A comparison between the first and second clusters of
9). Much has been published about the wonders of labora- histograms based on four experiments shows that, in every
tories, but not enough about the nonlearning. Think about case, the number of “thoughtless” questions dropped for stu-
the situation in terms of the model, and the causes of dents doing prelabs when compared with those without
nonlearning become obvious. A few lines from a laboratory prelab. The third cluster shows the effect of no prelab, but
instruction book will serve to make the point. The students with postlabs. There is an increase in uncertainty, as might
have just synthesized a copper(I) complex and are about to
analyze it for copper. Table 2. Mean Exam Score for Each Note-Taking Group
“Weigh out 1 g of your white complex and add x mL of
50% nitric acid. When the reaction dies down, evaporate the Exam Number
Note-Taking Type
solution to dryness, cool, and add y mL of water. Now add 1 2
ammonia solution drop by drop until the solution just be- Inaccurate + incomplete 29.3 32.0
comes cloudy. Add acetic acid dropwise till the solution be- Accurate + complete 43.0 49.7
comes clear. Add 1 g of potassium iodide and titrate the io-
dine released with standard thiosulfate”. Accurate + complete + verbal communication 56.8 65.5
List for yourself the number of things the student has Accurate + complete + elaboration 75.0 79.0

266 Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 74 No. 3 March 1997

 Chemical Education Today

Table 3. Effect of Prelab on Postlab Performance

of Physics Students (1995–1996)
50
Mean Score
45 Experiment
Percent “Thoughtless”

40 No prelab Prelab
35 Resonance 35.51 47.66
Questions

30 EXP-1
25 EXP-2
Michaelson Interferometer 48.15 61.60
20 EXP-3 X-rays 50.59 62.50
15 EXP-4
Laser 55.88 75.64
10
5
0
WITHOUT WITH NO PRELAB +
PRELAB PRELAB PRELAB + POSTLAB
POSTLAB

Group that would be essential preknowledge for the block. An-

Figure 4. Frequency of “thoughtless” questions asked by students swers were given and the students were asked to join one
in the laboratory as registered in the demonstrator’s checklist. of two camps: those who needed help and those who could
give help. The helpers were paired with the “needy” and the
be expected when the postlabs were applied with no instruc- prelect continued with tasks in which students could teach
tions. However, comparison between the third and fourth each other under supervision. The postlects were designed
histogram clusters shows a fall in uncertainty when prelabs to link the content of the block with previous blocks and to
are applied before postlabs. The statistical measurements consolidate. Prelabs and postlabs were treated similarly.
overall showed that the main factor in the students’ favor- The classes to which this course structure was applied
able response to the lab was the prelab. contained a very mixed group of students in terms of their
An experiment recently done in our physics labs took entrance knowledge
this a step further. Two groups of 85 students conducted from high school. Some
four postlab experiments. One group was given a prelab and The postlabs served two had done five years of
the other was not. The postlabs served two functions: to an- chemistry, some had
chor the learning in the lab to previous knowledge and to functions: to anchor the done none. One would
allow the students to use the lab learning to do something learning in the lab to expect that in any as-
original. The postlabs were graded and the results are sessment the more expe-
shown in Table 3. In every case, the students who began previous knowledge and rienced students would
with a prelab significantly outperformed those without to allow the students to be more successful than
prelab. This is entirely in line with commandments 1, 2, 3, the less and least expe-
use the lab learning to do rienced. This turned out
7, 8, and 9.
something original. not to be the case. The
The Model Applied to Curriculum Design mean scores and distri-
butions on all tests for
In a longitudinal experiment in curriculum design we all groups were almost perfectly superimposable! In fact the
began by accepting the commandments and planning a top student in the year as a whole came from the less expe-
course structure round them before deciding on the chemi- rienced group. A search was made through factors that
cal content. If previous learning was such an important fac- might explain this (age, personality, gender, math perfor-
tor, it was clear that we mance, learning style) but none yielded a clue. Our suppo-
should consider prelects sition, yet to be proven, is that the structure of the learning
as well as prelabs. If One of the main ways of experience, based upon the model, had enabled all groups
postlabs were important to learn well. It would be folly to make unequivocal claims
for consolidation we also
coping was for students for the success of the model, but we can say that, where it
needed postlects. How to work on the has been applied, our students have had more success with
were opportunities to be their learning than before.
assumption that if the
given to students to learn
by teaching? lecturer went to the Some Parting Thoughts
The structure that trouble of writing
evolved had this shape. If chemical education is to be a discipline, it has to have
In the conventional something on the a shape and structure and clear, shared theories on which
course, teaching took blackboard, it must be testable hypotheses can be raised. At present we are still in
place in blocks ten hours some respects dabbling in chem-ed alchemy, trying to turn
long with additional as-
important. lead into gold with no clear idea about how this is to be
sociated lab work and tu- achieved. Some factions proclaim a touchstone in some pet
torials. It was decided to devote the first hour of each block method such as Problem-Based Learning or Computer-As-
to a prelect and the last hour to a postlect. This reduced sisted Learning or Multimedia Learning or Demonstration,
the teaching time from ten to eight hours, but if it produced while others are dabbling in Conceptual Assessment,
eight hours of better learning, there might be no real loss. Microscale Labs, and fancy textbooks accompanied by
The prelect took the form of a brief quiz on the material teachers’ guides. None of these things is bad, but what
theory is driving them? Is there any evidence that they are

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Chemical Education Today

achieving what is claimed for them? Are we any nearer to terns of human thinking that are universal and so will give
making gold? chem-ed research the possibility of findings that will be
The fact that students are still, despite our best efforts, transferable and international.
voting with their feet and getting out of chemistry, should
be telling us something. This is a worldwide phenomenon Literature Cited
with just a few areas bucking the trend.
There is surely a message here for chemical educators. 1. Johnstone, A. H.; Letton, K. M.; Speakman, J. C. Educ. Chem.
Our alchemy is not working. We need to move on in the way 1980, 17, 172–177.
2. Baddeley, A., Working Memory; University Press: Oxford, 1986.
that chemistry did in the 18th century. The bits of informa- 3. Johnstone, A. H. J. Chem. Educ. 1983, 60, 968–971.
tion gleaned from alchemy had to be fitted together to form 4. Norman, D. A., Things That Make Us Smart’ Addison Wesley: New
patterns and give direction to an otherwise haphazard pur- York, 1993.
5. Ausubel, D. P.; Novak, J. D.; Hanesian, H. Educational Psychol-
suit of the unattainable. ogy: a Cognitive View; Holt, Rinehart and Winston: London, 1978.
I have tried to set out in this paper a simple theoreti- 6. Entwistle, N.; Ramsden, P. Understanding Student Learning;
cal model that has given direction and stimulus to my own Croom Helm: London, 1983.
7. Johnstone, A. H.; Su, W. Y. Educ. Chem. 1994, 81(3), 75–79.
research and that, I hope, has commended itself to the 8. Johnstone, A. H.; Wham, A. J. B. Educ. Chem. 1982, 19(3), 71–
reader. Like any theory, it is incomplete and will be in need 73.
of modification and development, but it does deal with pat- 9. Johnstone, A. H. J. Chem. Educ. 1984, 61, 847–849

268 Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 74 No. 3 March 1997