INSIGHT | COMMENTARY

From crazy chemists to engaged

learners through education
David K. Smith

recent anti-drugs campaign in the

United Kingdom introduced a
sinister new character to the general
public the crazy chemist. Intent on
selling dangerous chemicals to young
people, this bald-headed man, with an evil
look in his eye, was used to warn 1824
year-olds away from the dangers of newly
emerging legal highs1.
Clearly, chemistry and chemists
have an image problem. About fifteen years
ago, in an influential survey carried out by
the Royal Society of Chemistry, primary
school teachers reflected the attitudes of
the general public when they described
chemistry as a difficult and boring subject
pursued by intelligent but unimaginative
people2. And although much has changed
since then, a negative impression of
chemistry is clearly still embedded in the
public psyche. How can we teach chemistry
to students so that they move away from
this perception that chemistry is inherently
bad? Employing the very best approaches to
engaging students with chemical education
lies at the heart of solving this problem.
In science education, there is sometimes
perceived to be a tension between two
groups of school students. The first group
is composed of those who will go on
to become scientists perhaps even
chemists and the second (often larger)
one contains those who will not. Many
professional scientists argue that the first
group of students requires a conceptual
approach to scientific knowledge, in the
form of rigorous facts and principles, such
as thermodynamics or organic mechanisms,
often taught in an abstract manner. As
such, much of science education has
traditionally been delivered in this way. It
is perhaps surprising that scientists, who
inherently believe in experimentation and
progress, are really quite conservative when
it comes to applying a scientific approach to
education itself, and are often reluctant to

engage in change that may lead to profound

improvements in educational outcomes3,4.
Against this background, it
has increasingly become clear
that the second group of
non-scientific students finds
the traditional approach to
chemical education difficult
and/or uninspiring,
struggling to understand
the relevance of
conceptual chemistry.
Such students ideally
need to develop
scientific (or chemical)
literacy, allowing them
to understand the world
they live in, and engage
in a meaningful way with
scientific developments
that will have impacts on
their lives5,6. Can both groups of
students be engaged in schools without
compromising on education?

From information to interpretation

In recent years, there has therefore been

intense interest in, and development
of, context-led approaches to chemical
education in schools79. Rather than
focusing on teaching conceptual chemistry,
a context-led approach relies on engaging
students natural curiosity to understand
the world around them, and leads them to
solve real-world problems by exploring the
underlying chemistry 10. Thermodynamics,
for example, can be taught in the context
of space flight or the energy present in
food, and organic chemistry may be taught
through a need to understand the synthesis
and behaviour of drug molecules. There
is clear evidence that such an approach
can improve student engagement and
attitudes to chemistry 11,12, as well as
enhancing student performance and depth
of learning 13,14.

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2011 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved

The context-led approach, however, often

covers a smaller syllabus base, rewarding
higher-level tasks such as interpretation and
analysis rather than breadth of conceptual
coverage. As such, even though these
approaches are now very well
embedded in schools in a
number of countries, there
remains considerable
suspicion amongst
some professional
chemists that the
context-led teaching
methods somehow
encourages
dumbing-down,
and that the group
of students composed
of future scientists
will be ill-served by
the perceived absence of
factual knowledge15,16.
In my view, it is essential that
we should be very clear as scientists about
what we want to teach our students
as others have asked17, do we want our
students to know what we know, or do we
want them to understand how we think?
Increasingly, the internet age is having
a dramatic effect on the requirements of
science education. One of the rate-limiting
steps in being a scientist used to be the
retrieval of information. As a graduate
student, I remember day-long hunts
through convoluted library indexes looking
for obscure compounds and reactions. This
was a time-consuming process, and as such,
there was a significant advantage of having
the knowledge available in my head, for
easy recall. Put simply, chemists who knew
more stuff could get on much more quickly.
However, with the internet, typing a query
into the right search engine will now return
information almost effortlessly is it
really worthwhile committing all of this
knowledge to memory?
681

2010 CROWN COPYRIGHT

As well as teaching students what we know, it is becoming increasingly important to teach them how we
think. We must take a scientific approach to science education and experiment with teaching methods,
including context-led work and media-rich resources, to foster active and independent student engagement.

 L TO R: 2012 MCGRAW-HILL; 2000 NELSON THORNES; 2006 CORNELSEN

COMMENTARY | INSIGHT
Of course a foundation of sound
knowledge is crucial, but perhaps the bigger
challenges facing the modern chemist are
to appreciate the true value of the available
information, develop the skills to interpret
it sensibly, gain the capability to make
creative connections between data from
different sources, and to be able to spot the
needles in the ever-expanding information
haystack. In essence, in the internet age,
the premium is shifting from information
and facts (knowledge) to interpretation
and creativity (cognitive skills). Indeed,
the most successful research chemists must
win grants, publish papers and have patents
awarded based on their ability to innovate
or to form coherent new theories from
disparate facts.
How can we best prepare students to
achieve these goals? Does a traditional
knowledge-based education system, in
which the primary goal is to impart facts
to the students, really educate scientists for
careers in the modern world?
As important as what we choose to teach
our students is whether we teach them to
become active and independent learners,
taking responsibility for their own progress
rather than relying on an instructor to
always tell them what is right or wrong.
Chemistry taught in a real-world context
provides excellent opportunities for active
learning, project work, group exercises and
innovative modes of assessment. All of these
approaches allow students to actively engage
in their own education a process that is
known to give rise to deeper learning 1822. In
fact, from my own, very traditional, physics
education in school, the one thing that sticks
in my mind was a two-day team competition
within our class in which we had to present
competing proposals to develop and design
a communication network linking London
and Amsterdam. Arguably, I learnt more
skills and physics from this game than
through any of my chalk and talk learning
experiences in the subject.
In the light of these considerations, I feel
that as well as knowing some chemistry, we

682

want our students to know how to think.

Using embedded context to give a deeper
appreciation of chemistry and combining
this with active learning strategies can
only empower our students with a greater
creativity surely the characteristic we
prize most in scientists. As such, I would
argue that context-based teaching is
beneficial, not only to those students in
schools who will never work in science, but
also to those who will be the scientists of the
future. University educators should seriously
consider embedding context, as well as
merely concept, into their teaching. This can
transform the student learning experience
and encourage much greater levels of
engagement with the taught material.
Indeed, from my own university-based
teaching practice, where I have embedded
context into courses designed to teach
fundamental principles of organic chemistry
reactions and mechanisms, students
have responded with great enthusiasm,
making numerous comments such as:
You actually try to apply the science we
learn to real world topics. So thank you
(anonymous undergraduate student survey,
University of York).

Talking about science

Such a real-world approach for students

might also help to change the image of
chemistry to a greater extent. In general,
the mainstream media struggles with
science perhaps reflected by the fact
that in UK-wide surveys, almost half of
respondents consider themselves poorly
informed about science23. The poor media
coverage of science may be a consequence
of the majority of journalists and TV
performers coming from arts and social
science backgrounds indeed, even serious
national newspapers often employ only one
or two journalists with any kind of scientific
background. The biggest single media
problem faced by the chemistry community,
however, can be summed up in a single
word chemical. If you search any major
online news outlet for this word, you will

invariably find a predominance of chemical

leaks, poisonings, incidents and pollution.
Only very rarely would a new drug be
described as a chemical, and hardly ever
would the clever chemicals vital for making
your iPhone work be acknowledged.

The wider population are

interested in chemistry, but
they dont often recognise
it as such.
Although physics and biology have
been well served by television shows
presenting the wider population with
the marvels of the natural world, or the
wonders of the universe, chemistry has
been largely ignored24. This is in spite of
the fact that chemistry is fundamental to
life as we experience it the way food
and drink taste, how drugs cure us, the
changing climate and the novel materials
that enable architects to design and build
amazing structures. I wish that the broader
population saw the world like chemists do.
By seeing that everything contains atoms,
and by understanding them and the way
they combine into molecules, which interact
with one another and their surroundings, it
is possible to gain a unique understanding of
the world, and learn how to best manipulate
it. Furthermore, chemistry is a uniquely
creative scientific discipline chemical
synthesis allows us to make some things
that are completely new, or to change and
improve other ones. It is certainly not a
subject for the unimaginative indeed, to
be a really successful synthetic chemist, a
spark of creative genius is required.
Interestingly, the wider population looks
at the world around them, and they are
interested in chemistry but unfortunately,
they dont often recognise it as such. In a
2008 UK survey 23, the results of which were
also reflected in a Europe-wide study 25,
94% of the population were interested in
learning about health, 89% about medical
discoveries and environmental issues, 79%
wanted to know about new technologies and
77% about new scientific discoveries. Yet
only 67% were interested in current affairs,
62% in sport, and 60% in UK politics all
of which fill our media. These figures are
quite remarkable, and indicate a latent
desire amongst the wider population to
know more about science. Yet, a majority of
respondents to the survey also agreed with
the statement that science is too specialised
for most people to understand. So how can
we inspire the wider population with the
wonders of science in general, and get them
to engage with chemistry in particular?

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INSIGHT | COMMENTARY
Science education, discussed above, and
communication are two sides of this coin.
Intervention through better science
education, such as the contextual approach
advocated above, is by far the best way to
improve engagement with, and the image
of, chemistry in the wider population in the
long term. However, this does not mean that
scientists should wash their hands of the
issue, and assume that teachers will do all the
hard work. Research has demonstrated that
educational interventions made by practising
scientists with schoolchildren are of huge
value26. Furthermore, such interventions
with the general public can also have a great
influence. Practising chemists therefore have
a vital role to play in the communication
of science. It has been proposed that the
secret to effective science communication
and engagement lies in a five-fold approach
defined by the vowels AEIOU (awareness,
enjoyment, interest, opinion-forming and
understanding)27. By remembering that each
of these outcomes is equally important for the
audience, scientists can create high-quality
and effective public-engagement activities.
The traditional way of engaging nonscientists with the marvels of chemistry has
been to carry out spectacular experiments
with explosions featuring heavily. There is
no doubt that such experiments have real
value in promoting the power of chemistry
and providing a thrilling spectacle. However,
in my opinion and that of others28, chemists
as a community need to think hard about
whether this is the best approach to
engagement. Do such experiments make
chemistry seem approachable, or even safe?
Or do they instead encourage the audience
to marvel at the powers of those crazy
chemists who can control the inherent
risks? What does an audience take away
from such an experience? Do they gain the
perception that chemistry is everywhere
around them and of huge potential benefit to
their lives?
Undoubtedly, the demonstration
lecture will survive well into the future
and continue to inspire a certain type of
chemist, but I believe it is essential that we
continue to develop truly engaging lectures,
which should still include demonstrations
and lively audience participation, but in
which chemistry is clearly placed within a
societal context the chemistry underlying
medicine, forensics, the environment and
so on. Lectures such as these can stimulate
the audience to engage with chemistry in
an entirely different way to flash/bang
lectures, allowing them to take away
an understanding of the true impact of
chemistry on everyday life. Indeed, it is
within this context that my own lecture on
medicinal chemistry has had significant

impact 29. From my experience, working with

school students can be highly stimulating
and influential not only for them,
hopefully, but also for my own practice as
a researcher. Questions raised by students
after my talks have opened up whole new
research areas in fact, one of the questions
asked by a student about how we can
stimulate DNA release from our synthetic
gene delivery vehicles remains one of the
biggest problems we are trying to solve in
our research30,31.

ITube, YouTube, WeTube, ChemTube

As described above, science communication

and public education has traditionally
involved scientists going out and speaking
to groups of students or members of the
general public in outreach lectures, or
at science fairs or cafes. However, in the
same way that education is changing in
the internet age, so are the ways in which
scientists can engage with the world
students and otherwise beyond the
laboratory walls. As a result, a number of
chemistry educators have begun to exploit
social media sites, such as YouTube. In
this way, the traditional non-scientific
gateholders who control access to the
media, such as the TV companies and
newspapers, can be by-passed. This enables
the bottom-up creation of a new sciencerich media.
At its simplest level, YouTube material
can consist of lectures, or tutorial-style
teaching, placed online to support students
learning, help their understanding of
challenging concepts, and allow them
to watch worked examples being solved.
However, the power of science new-media
also extends far beyond the ability to teach
and support university-level chemistry

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2011 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved

students. For example, Periodic Videos

have done a wonderful job of creating
an online video database version of the
periodic table32. Their combination of
spectacular experiments and the musings
of their very own mad professor, Martyn
Poliakoff from Nottingham University,
makes for compulsive viewing and has
generated a cult audience that extends into
the general population.
My own approach to YouTube
(ProfessorDaveatYork) is somewhat
different 33. As a way of engaging our own
undergraduate students with the contextual
relevance of what they were learning in class,
I initially made a series of support videos
outlining the organic chemistry inherent in
everyday things, such as a gin and tonic, a
Friday night curry, or a glass of coca-cola.
I then went on to explore the chemistry of
topical issues, like newly emerging drugs
such as mephedrone, debunking some of
the myths and providing reliable chemical
information. These videos have gone on
to engage a worldwide audience, receiving
hundreds of thousands of views and
generating hundreds of comments.
These approaches can have a significant
impact on peoples understanding of science
and public health issues. This is reflected
by user comments such as: brilliantly
explained and far more informative than
anything in the printed press34. With
these approaches, we can talk directly to
students and the public, and hopefully move
beyond the influence of the governmentinspired crazy chemist anti-drug
campaign. As one viewer puts it, Excellent
information, and far better a deterrent than
any ban, facts rather than press-driven
hysteria and idiot politicians ignoring
science and reacting to catch votes34.
683

COMMENTARY | INSIGHT
In medicine, there has been considerable
interest in determining whether the
wide range of videos posted on YouTube
constitute useful and educational publichealth information or not. It turns out
that in some cases they are accurate35,
whereas in others there can be significant
misinformation36. Only by scientists
taking an active stake in video media,
making their own videos and responding
to scientific misinformation, will we
ensure that quality material is available
for students and the public worldwide to
engage with which they are doing in
huge numbers. This is therefore a great
way of demonstrating to many people the
amazing things chemistry can do, as well
as encouraging them to take part in the
debate with both positive and negative
arguments which is such an intrinsic
part of chemical and scientific progress.

Although physics and biology

have been well served by
television shows, chemistry
has been largely ignored.
Indeed, one of the great advantages
of social media is the way in which it
encourages viewers to participate, either by
leaving comments, or in the case of YouTube,
even by making their own video responses.
This allows the viewer to become an active
participant, sharing their experience of, and
views on, the learning process. From my own
experience, user comments have prompted
me to reflect on the material I have produced,
elicited responses from me, led me to
make videos on new topics, and sometimes
even enabled me to form new professional
relationships. Furthermore, this experience
encouraged me to run an undergraduate
course in which students could submit their
independent learning project work in the
form of a YouTube video. In this way, social
media can be used to generate really active
learning outcomes3739 with the students
creating engaging, inspiring, innovative
and highly educational material that will

684

continue to inspire the next generation of

chemistry learners, as well as being suitable
for public consumption.
Beyond YouTube, it is also possible
to develop interactive resources that
allow students to develop as active and
independent learners. For example
ChemTube3D, put together by Nick Greeves
at Liverpool40, is an excellent collection
of 3D structures and animations, ideal
for supporting student learning, and
ChemSpider 41, produced by the Royal
Society of Chemistry, is a powerful
molecular database for student use.
Educators at all levels should embrace such
resources and encourage their students to
engage with them independently. This will be
the secret to our students ongoing success as
independent learners long after they have left
formal education. Furthermore, we should
all consider making additional materials
ourselves to enrich learning experiences,
and allow students to engage with learning
outside the traditional classroom setting.

Conclusions

As chemical practitioners, there are many

ways that we can move beyond the image
of the crazy chemist sometimes imposed
upon us. We know that chemistry is not bad,
chemicals are everywhere and understanding
them is empowering we now need to
find ways to efficiently convey this to nonchemists, or not-yet-chemists. We can achieve
this by engaging with the twin concepts of
education and communication, in the same
manner we would like our students to engage
with chemistry. We need to seek out the very
best ways of enticing our own students to
become active learners, and in turn, translate
these approaches into interactions with
a wider audience. I firmly believe that by
placing chemistry in a clear societal context,
and interacting with our audiences on such
issues, we can not only turn our students
into more active, independent learners, with
the chemical literacy required for innovative
problem-solving, but we can also engage the
broader population, and convince them that
chemistry is an important and inspiring part
of their lives.

David K.Smith is at the Department of Chemistry,

University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD, UK.
e-mail: david.smith@york.ac.uk
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