Curriculum development is a bit like the Briggs-Rauscher reaction: back and forth, to and fro, back and forth, to and fro…
For various reasons, we need to reconsider the “how to teach chemistry” we include in the @SotonEd PGCE Secondary Science programme. The majority of our partnership schools are 11-16, so our trainee teachers typically teach all three sciences to Combined GCSE, whatever their specialism. This means that, whilst our PGCE curriculum content is definitely about “how to teach” chemistry, there will be trainees who have to work on their own subject knowledge, as well as those for whom A-Level is a breeze. But that doesn’t mean the training has to take account of the essential sequencing in the school curriculum. If topic A is essential in understanding topic B, but A is straightforward to teach whilst B is much trickier to get right, then we might well cover B and just get the trainees to swot up on A.
So, put yourself in our shoes. If there was only one thing you could cover, what would it be? “How to teach balancing chemical equations”, or “How to teach the reactivity series of metals and carbon” or something else. What about if you had three sessions to play with, or six, or twelve (we don’t have twelve!)? I’m interested in what you think is absolutely essential (we can’t cover everything) and your ranking within that essential list.
You can either comment here, or Tweet me @dodiscimus.