Secondary school and undergraduate chemistry students generally have limited understanding of the requirements of post-graduate study.  While the respective chemistry curricula usually include well-researched and reliable classroom or laboratory experiments, these scripted exercises offer little insight into what it takes to be an independent researcher.  After experimenting with several curricula for the high school classroom, our team of graduate students found unexpected and exciting rewards with a paradigm in which high school students are directed to design, conduct, and present the results of their own unique experiments, without a pre-determined methodology.  Since students are seldom given the opportunity to be creative in the planning of experiments, the process of independently forming a hypothesis and testing it sheds new light on a well-worn teaching model, and has proven to be an unexpectedly valuable pedagogical tool for both students and their teachers.

Shedding light on a well-worn teaching paradigm: Asking students to think about how to design a successful experiment and watching them learn why research in chemistry is valuable, creative, and fun

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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