Subject Matter of Inorganic Chemistry at the ISCED 2 Level

• Published in: Journal of physics. Conference series Vol. 3037; no. 1; pp. 12009 - 12017
• Main Authors: Čtrnáctová, Hana, Vlčková, Tereza
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bristol IOP Publishing 01.06.2025
• Subjects: Inorganic chemistry; Students
• ISSN: 1742-6588; 1742-6596
• DOI: 10.1088/1742-6596/3037/1/012009

The contribution deals with the selection and structuring of the subject matter of inorganic chemistry at the ISCED 2 level. It starts from the selection of information and activities corresponding to the current goals and expected outputs of education. In order to express the subject matter structure, decided on the basis of logical connections between the individual pieces of knowledge, the use of graphs allows for orderly visualization of the structure. The analysis of subject matter in FEP and current textbooks clearly shows that the most common ordering of the subject matter is the deductive one, starting from general chemistry knowledge and using it to deduce the knowledge of inorganic chemistry. Since this way of teaching, as a lot of research shows, is very abstract for the students, we have suggested and graphically expressed a subject matter structure based on the inductive ordering of the subject matter. The starting knowledge here is information from real life, stated in a nonverbal way; these are understandable for the students through their graphicness and because they show them natural substances, manufactured products, or phenomena they know. They use this to derive further knowledge, gradually reaching an understanding of the properties and behavior of elements and their compounds.