Contextualize
Select a relevant context
During the planning phase, it is important to contextualize chemistry teaching using an issue, problem, or situation of interest relevant to the students and their communities that creates opportunities for them to develop core understandings and competencies in our courses. Thus, it is critical to:
Identify a relevant socioenvironmental or socio-scientific problem that is important for students to analyze and demands the understanding of central ideas in chemistry.
For example, imagine you wanted to adopt a systems thinking approach in teaching structure-property relationships in a general chemistry course at the university level. The analysis of the composition and structural characteristics of greenhouse gases, their interactions with electromagnetic radiation in the atmosphere, and the effects of those interactions on average temperatures on our planet represents an ideal context to introduce and apply central concepts in chemistry such as electronegativity, partial charge, bond polarity, molecular polarity, and light-matter interactions using a systems thinking perspective. This context allows us to explore and reinforce the central idea that the composition and structure of chemical substances at the submicroscopic level determines their physical and chemical properties.
