0000000000614944
AUTHOR
Jelena Volkinsteine
ACQUISITION OF STUDENT SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY SKILLS: CENTRALISED EXAMINATION RESULTS IN CHEMISTRY
From 2011, the new educational standard in Latvia in the framework of the educational reform on the centralised examination (CE) in chemistry stipulates students to demonstrate the inquiry skills they have mastered. The purpose of this study is to find out the students’ inquiry skills by analysing the CE results in chemistry. This study addresses the following research questions: (a) To what extent are the centralised examination inquiry skills measured according to the standard outcomes? (b) What information on how students have mastered the inquiry skills in chemistry is available from the CE results for the period of 2011-2015? (c) Does measuring the inquiry skills using inquiry-based la…
EXPERIMENTS WITH EVERYDAY SUBSTANCES FOR AN INTERESTING AND PRODUCTIVE LEARNING IN CHEMISTRY
A concept “Chemistry for life” developed in Germany characterises a number of the-ses generally recognised in modern didactics, from which the principle “from the simple to more difficult” and psychological laws of learning are highlighted. This concept is in par-ticular characterised by the thesis that chemistry studies should be based on student every-day notions. The foundation of chemistry studies is experimentation with everyday substanc-es. The concept “Chemistry for life” can be successfully used for acquiring chemistry in schools in Latvia by intensifying the use of experiments with everyday substances and devel-oping student inquiry skills. Key words: chemistry for life, chemistry …