Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 9
Students Discover Organic Chemistry:
A Phenomena-Oriented and Inquiry-Based
Network Concept (PIN-Concept)
The Phenomena-oriented and Inquiry-based Network-Concept (PIN-Concept) is a
curriculum for the training of interconnected thinking in the field of fundamental
organic chemistry. It has been developed by Harsch and Heimann [
1
-
21
] for
the chemical and didactical education of prospective teachers at universities,
and for practicing chemistry teachers and their classes at grammar schools. The
PIN-Concept turned out to be motivating and effective for teachers' training and for
chemistry classes at stage 10-11 (age 16-17). Good experience has also been
gained with some simplified components from the PIN-Concept at stages 8-9, but
this has not yet been investigated systematically.
Schl
€
osser [
22
], Wenck [
23
,
24
], and Christen [
25
] highlighted the advantages of
an early introduction to organic chemistry in the 1970s and 1980s already. This
good idea has unfortunately not yet been realized in the German syllabus to this
very day, despite the fact that the possible benefits to biology and nutrition educa-
tion are well known. It is necessary to improve this deficiency in the near future and
to foster competences across subject borders.
The usability of a curriculum for such a diversified group of students requires
a modular concept that leaves a margin for contents and methods. Therefore,
the PIN-Concept is not an “all-or-nothing-concept,” but a flexible modular system.
The aspirational level can be varied for different addresses depending on their
preknowledge and also depending on the intended complexity and connectivity of
contents and methods.
The PIN-Concept can be characterized with seven didactically reasoned
principles ([
1
], p. 1-29):
- Criterion of concreteness:
New contents, concepts, and methods should always be introduced in class in a
concrete way, i.e., on the basis of actual learners' experiences. This will mostly
be experimental experience with substances and their observed properties
including their chemical change under specific conditions. The transition to an
abstract level of understanding should not be expected by the teacher before the
students have become acquainted with a sufficient broad basis of phenomena and
