Dr. Ryan Stowe, University of Wisconsin
Seminar Title: "Chemistry for Whom and for What Purpose?"
Host: Matt Wu, wu.6250@osu.edu
Zoom Link: https://osu.zoom.us/j/9303326442?pwd=UncwWmlxMkU4bzV5OThmYWU0NHJiZz09
ABSTRACT:
Our field operates under the tacit assumption that chemistry learning is useful to future citizens and future scientists. This assumption justifies chemistry’s place in most states’ K-12 science standards, and in prerequisite structures for virtually all STEM majors. Here, I explore how we can work to align our goal of supporting useful chemistry learning with the way we build and enact learning environments. I argue that doing so requires a particular focus on how and why leaners construct, refine and communicate knowledge. This focus is necessary due to evidence that, for students to see ways of knowing and learning emphasized in-class as useful in-life, they must (tacitly) see school tasks as contiguous with life tasks. I will present three studies that allow us to think together about knowledge and ways of knowing that we allow in chemistry class. First, I will demonstrate that, even in a class that emphasizes mimicking scientific practice, the goals guiding students’ knowledge construction are unlikely to be useful beyond the classroom. Second, I will illustrate the generativity of focusing on how our assessments communicate allowed ways to know and learn. Finally, I will illustrate how taken-for granted assumptions about chemistry knowledge and knowers emerged from epistemic premises that most of us will find very objectionable. Surfacing and working to reject these premises will open up more expansive opportunities to support chemistry learning that is useful in daily life.
