Five go to Thailand
The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) held their biennial chemical education conference in Pattaya, Thailand on 15 July.
The theme of the meeting was how chemistry education could be steered towards teaching the attainment of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to which the UK Government is a signatory.
The chair of the meeting was Professor Supawan Tantayanon, who has done wonderful work in promoting small-scale and microscale chemistry amongst the students and teachers in Thailand’s schools and other countries of Southeast Asia.
Supawan convinced the hotel that the experienced teachers and academics from the many diverse countries attending could stage a three-hour exhibition workshop in a large open area for all the delegates.
Small and microscale chemistry is designed with safety in mind but has now found many other positive advantages, such as reducing consumption and waste, classroom management, allowing teaching time to feature alongside practical work, addressing student misunderstandings and musing modern equipment.
The techniques naturally adopt the Green Chemistry principles and in doing so are used in teaching toward SDGs as promoted by the 欧美AV in school education.
Bob Worley F欧美AV, of CLEAPSS, convinced Magda Polec M欧美AV (CLEAPSS), Robert Campbell M欧美AV (St Mary’s University, Twickenham, London), Matthew Smith M欧美AV, (St Paul’s School, Barnes) and Fiona Roberts RSciTech (The Morley Academy, Leeds) that they would find the conference a unique and
rewarding experience.
Fiona is a school science technician and the new chair of the ASE technician committee. I hazard a guess that she is the first technician to attend an IUPAC conference. As well as the exhibition, Magda produced a prize-winning poster.
We all gave well-received talks with Robert explaining about how he introduces the techniques to new teachers during training; Matthew showing, with superb gifs, how it is well received by his students; Fiona detailing how she prepares practicals for 15 groups, stored in one tray and how the techniques also allowed the inclusion of students with special educational needs into practical work.
I showed how the enthusiasm of many technicians and teachers has broken down objections to the approach by using social media, and publications in Education in Chemistry. This has culminated in the publication of a book by David Paterson and myself.
The visit has inspired me to direct our microscale practical activities towards the UN SDGs, similar to those seen from other countries in the exhibition. This brings relevance to the issues and problems to be solved rather than the skill hurdles to surmount for exam purposes (and how many students really do the experiments?).
For example, distillation techniques can be directed towards SDG6 (ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all). After all, if practical work really takes place, skills naturally develop.
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