Reframing Chemistry Learning: The Use of Student-Generated Contexts

Abstract

This chapter presents a teaching approach that focuses on student-generated contexts and how its use can reframe both chemistry teaching and learning. The eight phases of the Student-Generated Contexts Teaching Approach (SCTA) model—Introduction, Context Generation, Decision, Implementation, Presentation, Discussion, Reflection, and Context Regeneration—are described in terms of individual and collaborative context generation. To determine the nature of the contexts the students themselves generated, decision logs, reflection papers, and audio-recording transcripts were content-analyzed. The emerging themes on the nature of the contexts are: (1) source of the context; (2) level of the context; and (3) student engagement in the context. Sixty-five Grade 10 chemistry students comprised the two heterogeneous intact classes: one group was exposed to Individual Student-Generated Contexts Teaching Approach and another group was exposed to Collaborative Student-Generated Contexts Teaching Approach. The topics covered in the study included acids and bases, neutralization reactions, reduction–oxidation reactions, electrochemical cells, and electroplating. In this chapter, the contexts generated by the two groups are compared in terms of fluency, flexibility, and complexity. Finally, the benefits of using student-generated contexts in the teaching and learning of chemistry are discussed.