Supporting Teachers in Designing Context-Based Chemistry Education: Evaluation of an Activity-based Instructional Framework

One of the challenges of science education is to integrate activities, content and tools in a meaningful manner. A way to address this challenging goal is the transformation of authentic scientific practices for use in the science classroom, in line with cultural historic activity theory (CHAT). This paper presents results from a study aimed at supporting chemistry teachers to design curriculum materials using an authentic scientific modelling practice as source of inspiration. Specifically, the authors studied the effect of using an Activity-based Instructional Framework accompanied by the Authentic Practice of Modelling Human Exposure and Uptake of Chemicals in Consumer Products. Analysis of teachers’ designed curriculum materials and interviews indicates that the framework successfully build on teachers’ prior instructional ideas and focused teachers’ design activities. Most important, the framework supported teachers to operationalize the CHAT philosophical teaching orientation into a meaningful sequence of learning activities in which students work on an issue embedded in the authentic practice. The results show further that the instructional framework is highly appreciated by the teachers and provides valuable guidelines, except for evoking reflection in students. Further development of such instructional frameworks is important, since in many curriculum innovations teachers are designated as primary developers of teaching materials.