Foundations of Chemistry, 2006, vol 8, 93-95.

ERIC SCERRI
EDITORIAL 23



This special issue came about largely as a result of my own
concerns over the constructivism program in chemical education,
of which I gained first-hand experience while I was a
visiting professor at Purdue University.1 After publishing a
critical paper on this subject in the Journal of Chemical Education,
I contacted all chemical constructivists I had criticized
and invited them to respond. Unfortunately none of the protagonists
have seen fit to reply to the points I raised. The call
for papers was then widened to invite anyone with an interest in
this issue to submit an article. This time the response was rather
encouraging and we present here the five papers that made it
through the review process.
In his interesting contribution the Caltech chemist, Jay
Labinger, expresses a desire to mediate between the two parties
in the debate and urges more moderation upon critics like
myself. Labinger is well-known for his analogous efforts within
the Science Wars debate and for having co-edited a book of
papers with sociologist Harry Collins in which they attempted
to strike a conciliatory tone among the authors concerned.
While being highly commendable, Labinger’s contribution does
not grapple with any of the specific issues in chemical education,
a theme that is taken up by the remaining authors.
Donald Wink is a thoughtful chemical educator who is wellknown
for his incisive contributions to the chemical education
list server, among other forums. In the article in this issue Wink
attempts to tackle what is probably the central issue in the
debate over constructivism in science education. What exactly
is the relationship between educational constructivism and
epistemological constructivism? Are the arguments offered by
educational constructivists strengthened by appeal to
epistemological constructivism and indeed does one have any
right to appeal to such arguments to make educational points?
Kevin De Berg from Australia examines what he terms the
distinction between experience-based constructivism (based on
sense observation) and discipline-based constructivism (based
on chemical concepts and idealizations). As he puts the matter,
his aim is to show that, ‘‘constructivism appears more as a
fashionable educational label than as a significant undergirding
theory in chemical education.’’ He argues that many
strategies to develop active student participation have been
successfully implemented without any mention of the word
constructivism or without any appeal to its ‘philosophy’. Indeed
he points out that active learning has been fostered in education
as far back as the time of Socrates and Plato. De Berg believes
that experience-based constructivism fails as an epistemology
for a subject like chemistry where concepts, conventions and
idealizations are products of the human mind rather than of the
immediate sense experience so beloved of constructivists.
The Italian chemical educator Liberato Cardellini attempts
to clarify matters by presenting a recent interview which he
conducted with one of the heroes of educational constructivism,
Ernst von Glaserfeld. Unfortunately some of the things said by
von Glaserfeld serve, if anything, to cast further doubt about
the nature of the whole enterprise. At one point von Glaserfeld
informs his interviewer that, ‘‘The people who deem constructivism
to be anti-scientific are those who have never thought
about how science works.’’ He follows this a few words later by
saying, ‘‘If string theory brings about the revolution that it
seems to promise, everyone who uses the model of the atom will
have to reorganize his or her knowledge.’’ Given the energy/
scale difference between the alleged phenomena at the level of
strings and the level of the atom, this is a little like saying that
any new discoveries at the atomic level would produce a revolutionary
new view of sociology! One is bound to ask oneself
whether von Glaserfeld himself has any understanding ‘‘about
how science works’’?
Keith Taber a chemical educator from the University of
Cambridge carries out what he calls a Lakatosian analysis of
the research conducted on the learning of science. His findings
are that the criticisms of constructivism are merely the result of
the testing of the protective belt. He suggests that a shift of
focus from constructivism to ‘contingency learning’ would be
beneficial for the science learning research program. These
views would appear to echo the recommendations of De Berg
who suggests that constructivism is not necessary for the
improvement of chemical education even if it may have raised
some interesting points.
Finally, the challenge to the use of constructivism in chemical
education appears to be growing. Perhaps it is no coincidence
that no serious defence of this position has appeared in
the Journal of Chemical Education in recent years. It remains
to be seen whether the constructivists will mount any form of
response or whether this educational movement will wither
away as I and several others (pace Labinger) believe that it
ought to.
NOTE
1. E.R. Scerri, Philosophical Confusion in Chemical Education,
Journal of
Chemical Education, 80, 468–474, 2003


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The Periodic Table: Its Story and Its Significance, by Eric Scerri,
Oxford University Press, 2007.

named as an "outstanding academic book of 2007" by Choice Library
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Reviews:
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“Few concepts are more important in chemistry than the periodic
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author of "The Periodic Kingdom", "Molecules" etc.





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