Helping teachers make an impact
Our online and face-to-face training courses help teachers to make the most of their passion for teaching chemistry
Stephanie Musson, Royal Society of Chemistry
A single teacher can make a huge impact on hundreds of students. That is why a strong supply of enthusiastic, highly-qualified and confident chemistry teachers is important in fostering the next generation of skilled scientists, talented teachers and informed members of the public.
We are supporting teachers in a number of different ways, including encouraging and supporting their continuing professional development (CPD). By providing teachers with a range of opportunities to develop existing skills and acquire new ones, we help them to increase their subject knowledge, understanding of pedagogy and confidence in teaching difficult subjects.
Face-to-face courses
With the aim of giving those teaching chemistry at secondary schools an opportunity to strengthen their subject knowledge and develop their teaching skills, we offer a series of face-to-face courses throughout the UK. The engaging, hands-on courses, which are designed by expert teacher developers, fall into three categories:
- Chemistry for non-specialists
- Inspiring creative chemistry teaching
- Developing expertise in teaching chemistry
The Chemistry for non-specialists course is designed for those who teach secondary chemistry but have a background in another subject. Across a total of four days, it covers subjects ranging from understanding key ideas in chemistry to teaching practical chemistry in order to help develop confidence, flair and enthusiasm in teaching the subject at the pre-16 level.
The first few years in the classroom can be challenging for any teacher. As part of our strategy to support teachers, we have identified the need to avoid unnecessary attrition in the teacher workforce by ensuring an optimum teaching environment for chemistry. One aspect of this involves providing access to the necessary support and professional development opportunities.
Our Inspiring creative chemistry teaching series is aimed specifically at trainee teachers and those who are relatively new to the classroom. Its three courses cover pedagogical approaches to chemistry teaching, practical chemistry and pedagogical approaches to teaching at post-16 level. They enable teachers to, for example, find out about active learning and teaching strategies, try out and evaluate classic chemistry experiments and demonstrations, and experiment with techniques such as group work and flipped learning.
Our Developing expertise in teaching chemistry courses are designed to give teachers an in-depth understanding of key concepts in chemistry at pre- and post-16 levels. They focus on a range of theoretical and practical aspects, making use of a range of resources, including those available on our Learn Chemistry website. The 13 courses on offer cover topics ranging from organic, analytical and quantitative chemistry to structure and bonding, acids and bases and the use of models.
Taking training online
Our face-to-face courses have proved a success so far. However, we also want to make sure that we provide all teachers with consistent access to professional development. As a result, we launched a series of online CPD courses for teachers earlier this year.
We have created the courses to develop and deepen teachers’ knowledge and understanding of chemistry and associated teaching strategies in specific topic areas. Key aspects include: understanding the ‘thread’ of ideas for a concept, recognising, diagnosing and understanding ‘misconceptions’, and evaluating possible teaching approaches.
The first of our courses, Quantitative chemistry, is already available online, and we have plans to add thirteen additional courses on a range of subjects, including some hard-to-teach subject areas as well as courses relating to general chemistry teaching such as maths skills for chemists.
Learn when it suits you
The series is designed to complement the Developing expertise in teaching chemistry face-to-face courses, and the online content provided includes a variety of formats ranging from text and animations to videos and self-assessment quizzes. There are links to articles to help contextualise the topic areas and additional resources and activities to help support teachers when it comes to planning their lessons.
For those who struggle to find time to attend face-to-face training, our online courses can be completed at the user’s own pace. In addition, teachers can dip in and out of the content to suit their personal development needs. And by completing the self-assessment quizzes in each topic, they can judge and assess their progress.
Before completing a course, we encourage teachers to download and complete a course development plan, which gives them space to consider their aims in completing the course and record the impact this professional development will have on their teaching and wider department.
The personal ‘My record’ area allows users to have oversight of what courses they have subscribed to and how much time they have remaining to complete the course. When all topics within a course have been marked complete, teachers receive a downloadable certificate for their records. At this point, they are able to return to their course development plan to reflect on their aims and the impact the course has had.
What’s next?
In addition to adding further online CPD courses, we are also working on improving the training experience for our users. Over the last year we have been developing an online assessment tool that we will use to provide computer-marked quizzes that focus on providing detailed feedback. We will also be continuing technical developments that allow us to link our new assessment tool to the online courses. Self-assessment quizzes will help to identify the teachers’ individual development needs and guide them to appropriate topics within the courses.
As part of our plans to increase our support for primary teachers we are also exploring the application of the online course model for a primary teacher audience. The focus will be on how to teach science subjects to a young audience. As with our other online courses, these courses will be designed to be completed at the users’ own pace, and we will begin working on these in 2015.
