TEACHING ‘BIODIESEL’: A SOCIOCRITICAL AND PROBLEMORIENTED APPROACH TO CHEMISTRY TEACHING AND STUDENTS’ FIRST VIEWS ON IT
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Ingo EILKS*
University of Dortmund, Department of Chemistry, Germany
Abstract
A method to improve student motivation and attitude toward school science teaching may be to design lessons related to societal issues such as the actual and potential industrial applications of science and technology. This paper presents a teaching approach for the production of diesel fuels (biodiesel) from vegetable oils (rape seed oil). In addition it attempts a small evaluation by discussing students’ answers to just two simple questions on the method used. The objective was to determine whether student sociocritical reflection on the applications of scientific discoveries may improve their attitude towards science learning, their communicative skills and their personal development. [Chem. Educ. Res. Pract. Eur.: 2002, 3, 77-85]