Industrial Chemistry and School Chemistry: Making chemistry studies more relevant

In this paper, we present the development and implementation over the period of more than 15 years of learning materials focusing on industrial chemistry as the main theme. The work was conducted in the Department of Science Teaching at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. The project’s general goal was to teach chemistry concepts in the context of industrial chemistry in order to present chemistry as a relevant topic both to the students personally as well as to the society in which they live. The learning materials that were developed during this period were in alignment with the changes and reforms that were conducted in the Israeli educational system. These developments were accompanied with intensive and comprehensive professional development courses and workshops. In addition, several research and evaluation projects were conducted with the goal to assess students’ achievements and to probe into the students’ perceptions regarding the classroom learning environment and the teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards the various instructional and learning materials techniques that were implemented in the programme throughout these years. This paper is structured attempting to describe the curricular cycle in alignment with Goodlad’s and Van den Akker’s curriculum representations.