Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

Although the importance of including in the curriculum of all educational levels issues related to soil science has been strongly highlighted, the fact is that the importance that the quality and availability of organic matter in the quality of soil have received very little attention when it comes to considering educational practices in classrooms. This paper brings an educational proposal for teaching the transcendence of organic matter in soil at secondary level. The learning unit presented is based on essential chromatography techniques and allows the qualitative study of soil organic matter. The ultimate purpose is to offer basic educational tools for reflection on the implication that soil has in order to maintain biodiversity and food production.

Louis Édouard Grimaux (1835---1900), a French physician and pharmacist, devoted most of his efforts to the synthesis and properties of a large variety of organic compounds, the ureic series, alkaloids, nitrogen cyclic compounds, aromatic aldehydes, etc. He synthesized citric acid and a variety of colloids, albumins, and carbon hydrates. His open support of the innocence of Alfred Dreyfus led to his dismissal from the École Polytechnique, then under the rule of the Ministry of War.

To introduce more chemistry into a middle and high school bioengineering camp experience, we developed an educational and entertaining presentation that examines the chemistry in movies about aliens and minerals from outer space. Our goal was to help the campers to think creatively about the bioengineering projects they are doing and about its chemistry. After watching each movie clip, we explain whether the chemistry in the clip is real or fake, and then describe the real chemistry that inspired it. The chemical touchstone for the presentation is the periodic table. First, the campers learn that aliens in five movies are composed of the same elements as those found on Earth, although some do not have the same biochemistry. The second half of the talk is about the utility of extraterrestrial minerals of known composition. The campers learn that moviemakers speculate that people of the future might visit other celestial bodies to collect scarce minerals with known properties. The topics of alien biochemistry and extraterrestrial minerals are not often taught in the classroom. The pairing works well, however, for chemical outreach because it shows students how to bring divergent thoughts together to solve problems and, therefore, encourages creative chemical thinking.

Una actividad de aula en la que los futuros profesores de educación secundaria y bachillerato debían escalar actividades de Química según el grado de proximidad a lo cotidiano o de problematización que ellos consideraran nos ha permitido analizar su visión de contextualización y problematización. Sus respuestas nos permiten agruparlos en clústeres y su análisis nos aporta características de cada perfil identificado: aquellos que consideran cualquier actividad como cotidiana o como problema, otros que identifican «cotidiano» con materiales que no sean de laboratorio y «problemas» aquellas actividades que indiquen alguna acción (medir, explicar, etc.). Estos perfiles cobran especial relevancia para la formación inicial de docentes en promoción de la contextualización y de la indagación científica.

El presente artículo describe una investigación que caracterizó el currículo de enseñanza de la química en una Institución Educativa Distrital (IED) de Bogotá. A partir de esta se propuso y evaluó un currículo para la enseñanza de la química del grado décimo; en la propuesta se articularon los niveles disciplinar, metadisciplinar y cotidiano, como niveles de contextualización para la enseñanza de esta disciplina. El trabajo surge como necesidad de generar procesos que favorezcan el interés del estudiantado por la química y la mejora de la acción docente.La investigación fue cualitativa, como estudio de caso y se estructuró en tres fases: diagnóstico, diseño e implementación. En la fase de diagnóstico se caracterizó el currículo del IED, se recolectó información a través de encuestas, entrevistas, análisis documental y observación no participante a profesores y estudiantes. En la fase de diseño, se realizó la propuesta curricular desde el macro, meso y microcurrículo fundamentados en los contenidos contextualizados. La fase de implementación evaluó la propuesta permitiendo superar los vacíos encontrados en la caracterización del currículo del IED. El microcurrículo fue abordado desde una cuestión socio científica, permitiéndole al estudiantado aproximarse a un aprendizaje contextualizado y desarrollando en ellos capacidades argumentativas frente a las controversias propuestas.

A three-week mini-project is described for an experimental Physical Chemistry or Organic Chemistry course. The activities include synthesis of a biphenyl (4-methoxybiphenyl) via the Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling reaction using an adapted domestic microwave oven. The technical skills and concepts that are typically presented in practical chemistry courses are covered, including microwave heating, separation of mixtures, TLC techniques, melting range determination, stoichiometric calculations, and GC---MS techniques

This article reviews the evolution of curricula and projects of chemistry in context from the 80s to the present, highlighting how the reforms of educational systems and new perspectives and didactic approaches have gone shaping changes in the chemistry curriculum in the last four decades. The study tries to collect the innovations and the most significant curricular materials that have been developed in the USA and in several European and Latin American countries, initiating the route in the 60s and 70s to better understand the change that has meant the incorporation of the STS perspective and the chemistry in context in the curriculum of chemistry.

When instructors teach chemistry using real-world contexts, they weave connections between chemistry and the large public issues of our world.  They also weave connections between chemistry and the smaller – but equally significant – personal issues in the lives of their students.  Teaching and learning chemistry in real world contexts is not new; rather, it is a well-established practice backed by research on how people learn.  What has one college chemistry instructor (and her students) learned over the past 40 years?  The answer to this question is multi-dimensional, involving teaching philosophy, learning outcomes, changing contexts, changing content, and bringing the content and the contexts together. In answering this question, this paper employs air quality and plastics as examples of two real-world contexts that can engage students in learning chemistry through the “big questions” in our world today.

Context-based science education suggests that meaningful science teaching should be based on the lifeworld, society, or potential professional future of the pupils. But: Are all corresponding contexts for science education similarly good? This paper presents a curriculum model for using socio-scientific issues as contexts for science education in general and chemistry education in particular. It discusses the implications of this approach and presents an example on chemistry teaching about the issue of tattooing.

El premio Nobel de Química 2017 se otorgó a tres científicos que, durante casi cuarenta años, han resuelto complicadísimos problemas físicos, químicos, matemáticos y computacionales para lograr que la microscopía electrónica sirva para detectar la estructura tridimensional de complejos bioquímicos, entre los que destacan las proteínas. Este intricado método analítico permite, adicionalmente, estudiar el movimiento molecular que es fundamental para la función bioquímica de las proteínas.