Teaching chemistry in Hong Kong classrooms

Abstract

This symposium aims at demonstrating the role of multiple representations, namely, the marco, submicro and symbolic representations, in daily chemistry teaching in Hong Kong. The symposium is research-informed and practice-oriented. By being research-informed, the papers will report some practices of Hong Kong chemistry teachers in the light of current chemical education literature – particularly on the role of the triplet relationship (Gilbert & Treagust, 2009) and the role of visualization in chemistry teaching and learning (Gilbert, Reiner & Nakhleh, 2008). By being practice-oriented, these papers will report how ideas in the literature are realized in a context in which there is a prescribed official curriculum for all students, curriculum time is limited while the content is massive, textbooks predominate students’ expectation of how they are taught, all students will take a high stake school-leaving public examination in which teachers are, in one way of another, held accountable for the ...