Chemistry Education Research and Practice

The object of this paper is to show how research has gone hand in hand with development to produce materials for teaching and learning which take problem solving well above the level of algorithmic manipulation and into the realm of creativity. To combat the common feature of school science and chemistry in particular, that problems have a unique solution, and to give students an appreciation of real science, problems of an open kind have been developed, which encourage the ingenuity, and idiosyncratic contribution of the students involved for their solution. In these, often there is no correct answer, only a ‘best’ answer, and there may be a variety of possible methods of finding it. Criteria for success are very different from the more common type of closed problems, but are much more difficult to define. The second strand of the work described here aims to make students aware of the benefits of group work and discussion by setting them objectives which are more likely to be achieved by groups of students working cooperatively together. Discussion is seen as of two types: task orientated discussion (how to solve the problem), and reflective discussion to consider in what ways their group was successful, and why; and in what ways it was less successful, and why. This helps students to realise that their success as a group is more than the sum of their individual contributions. [Chem. Educ. Res. Pract., 2006, 7 (2), 96-113]