Coherence in the Teaching of South African Chemistry Lessons

This study was on the coherence of chemistry lessons taught by South African physical sciences teachers at historically disadvantaged township schools. Video transcripts of 30 lessons were analyzed and coded using a framework of conceptual coherence developed by the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) for the Science Teachers Learning from Lesson Analysis (STeLLA) project. It was revealed that learners in such classes have experiences that can be regarded as fragmented, disconnected, and incoherent. From this it can be inferred that these experiences limit their conceptual understanding in chemistry, leading to poor performance in the subject. The chapter provides a detailed analysis of two chemistry lessons for conceptual coherence, and from these lessons explicates some of the trends revealed in the overall findings. The implication of these findings is that teachers need to more explicitly sequence ideas, link ideas to one another, and support learners in connecting these ideas to activities they are engaged in.