Introduction

The delivery of quality and equitable science and mathematics education has been the focus of attention for countries like Ethiopia, which are struggling to drag themselves out of poverty and backwardness. In this regard the Ministry of Education has been doing its level best to improve the performance of the education sector since the past twenty years. Among the many efforts are the aggressive measures taken to improve the quality of the general education through publishing attractive textbooks, rationalizing content load and content difficulty and implementation of student centered approaches.

Besides this focus of the government on quality of education, there are still many challenges that contribute to poor quality of lessons of the various subjects taught in our schools. Some of the major challenges   include the shortage and low quality of teaching resources. Though the ministry of education is recently trying to institutionalize teacher professional development activities through school based CPD programs. Lack of sufficient training opportunities for teachers to update their skills in light of the modern methods of teaching and learning is also the other challenge. It is to be recalled that teachers equipped with modern and innovative teaching methods play a significant role in the provision of quality education.   

Conversely, teachers who are ill prepared and less invested with are likely to use inappropriate teaching methods that may result in students’ misconception of the taught idea.  Therefore, in order to curb this undesirable possibility, it is important to keep teachers up-to-date in their subject and profession through continuous professional development endeavors.  

Other complementary support to teachers include  direct suggestions of instructional strategies to improve lessons., The strategies should  challenge preconceptions and school-made misconceptions through recommending  alternatives to the traditional approaches, such as setting up simplified  laboratory experiments, use of  structural models and   technology-based methods.

Chemistry is one of the most important branches of science; it enables learners to understand what happened around them. Because chemistry topics are generally related to or based on the structure of matter, chemistry proves a difficult subject for many students. Chemistry curricula commonly incorporate many abstract concepts, which are central to further learning in both chemistry and other sciences. These abstract concepts are important because further chemistry/science concepts or theories cannot be easily understood if these underpinning concepts are not sufficiently grasped by the student

To this end, it is important to highlight that , the multi dimensional and deep rooted problems in provision of quality education in  our schools  cannot be resolved  by  the efforts of the government alone  It requires the active participation of the community , especially professional associations which hold a substantial stake in education.

This manual is therefore the result of the grand initiative taken by ETA to contribute its part in the improvement of the teaching and learning process in schools.

ETA took initiative of developing an alternative approaches of a web based science and mathematics teaching. Thus, the material is expected to play a remarkable role in giving the grade 9 chemistry teachers the opportunity to use alternative methods.

Rationale  

Provision of interactive science and mathematics lessons in schools plays a significant role in enhancing the growth of a country’s science and technology in particular and the economic development in general. Strengthening of these lessons require planned interventions in all dimensions of the teaching and learning process. Using communication technology in education is one of such efforts since it provides interactivity and simplicity to concretize the delivery of lessons.

Objectives

The main objectives of this manual are to:

• Provide alternative methods of teaching for grade 9 chemistry teachers;
• Create opportunity of communication among the teachers on the issues of teaching chemistry

How to use the manual

The manual is hoped to serve one of the two purposes: the lessons presented in the manual can directly be used by the teacher in the classroom, or they can be used as model to prepare lessons for the contents. The teacher can therefore download the lessons before the class, analyzes the design to internalize the approach and use it directly or with some modifications if necessary. What the teacher supposed to do are

• Organize the materials listed in the lesson
• Write down lesson plan based on the lesson provided

You may use a lesson plan format adapted from SMASEE (Strengthening Mathematics and Science Education in Ethiopia) which is under pilot and now upgrading. A sample plan is prepared and annexed at the end of the manual for the second lesson of the unit 2, Structure of the Atom. Please look at the lesson on page – of this manual and analyze how it is related to the plan.

Selection of the contents

It is not possible to suggest teaching methods for the whole lessons of grade 9 chemistry course in this limited pages manual. Some ‘difficult’ representative contents of each unit are selected using expert judgment basically depending on abstractness of a topic and misconceptions students may acquire during a lesson. The unavailability of teaching materials in schools is the other criterion for the selection of the topics for treatment in this manual. If such topics are treated using some model teaching approaches, it is believed that the remaining similar contents can be taught in the same way.

Selected contents

Table int. 1

Note for the teacher

When necessary, some brief notes are given in the manual at the beginning of the lessons. Moreover, the following general pints are advised for teachers to note during the planning and delivery of lessons.

When planning a lesson, the focus should be on how students learn not on how the teacher teaches. This means that the teacher should device in his/her plan activities which challenge the students in their learning. The activities should be motivating enough for the students to participate in the lesson with their minds, hands, tongues and hearts on. The activities should engage students in critical thinking, provide something to be done by their hands, and assist them to make decisions or bring about change in attitude. Unlike telling or informing facts, teachers require creativity in order to lead students into an investigation of a concept.

Care should be taken when activity is designed because unless there is certain bridge or clue for the students to go through, they may not be motivated to do it. So, formulation of an activity needs to be based on the known concept to explore the unknown.  

The sample lessons presented in this manual consist of different activities to be done by the students in groups or individually. Most of our schools’ classes are so large that it is difficult to arrange seats and make groups for discussions. Besides this challenge, all the possible efforts should be made to involve students since lessons are successfully achieved when students’ participation is maximized. For example it is possible to arrange discussion for   students in a desk or face to face with other students across desks. .

Tasks that are given to the students should be clear and understandable so that students are not bothered with the procedures and steps of the activities. This can be done by providing worksheets in the form of tables or charts in which students are directed to write their responses. Provision of printed worksheets is not possible in most of our schools in such cases; the teacher may write the worksheet on the chalk board in advance or prepare it on manila papers and post on the wall where every student can see and copy.

As mentioned above, the lessons presented in this manual are only sample lessons selected as models for the remaining contents. Therefore the teachers may adapt the methods on the basis of their circumstances.

It is our hope that using the web-based material will strengthen teachers’ confidence and stimulate their enthusiasm for better engagement in teaching physics.