ICS84

Looking into the future of chemical education

Gabriella Shwartz Yehudit Judy Dori
Faculty of Education in Science and Technology, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel

In Israel, 40% of the industrial export, 30% of the industrial revenue, and 9% of the industrial employment is dependent on its chemical industry. The ongoing acute shortage of scientifically-qualified, skilled people in the workforce and shortage of STEM teachers with solid scientific background has created a crisis that hinders sustainable economic development worldwide. Chemistry teachers are essential to motivate their students to major in chemistry and subsequently elect it as their future career. This research strives to understand the future of chemistry education in Israel based on past and present trends. Our research will focus on the personal, environmental, and behavioral factors that affect chemistry teachers to choose chemistry education as their future career. The study will apply a mixed method approach; we conducted nine semi-structures interviews and administrated open and closed-ended questionnaires to 67 chemistry first and second career teachers. Results showed that teachers have high self-efficacy and they believe in their potential to teach and to be experts in the chemistry subject matter. Additionally, the personal theme is more influential for teachers in their career choice, rather than the environmental theme. Furthermore, extrinsic motivation, both in the aspects of influence of teachers and status or prestige, was found to be the least influential for teachers` career choice. The contribution of this research is in expanding the research on motivation for choosing a career in teaching, by focusing on specific groups of second and first career teachers and in a specific field – chemistry. From a practical standpoint, we recommend to encourage students to major in chemistry during high school and later to choose a chemistry-related career.









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