When a major examination approaches, students would start going around in search for guidebooks that can help them to consolidate the important concepts that are necessary to meet the requirements of these assessments in the shortest amount of time. Unfortunately, most guidebooks are of the expository and non-refutational type, presenting facts rather than explaining them. In addition, the links between concepts are often not made explicit and presupposes that learners would be able to make the necessary integration with the multitude of concepts that they have come across in their few years of chemical education, forgetting that some of them may lack the prior knowledge and metacognitive skills to do it meaningfully. Hence, learners would at most be able to reproduce the information that is structured and organized by the guidebook writer, but not able to construct a meaningful conceptual mental model for oneself. As a result, they would not be able to fluidly apply what they should know across different contextual questions that appear when sitting for that major examination.
This revised edition is a continuation of our previous few books — Understanding Advanced Physical Inorganic Chemistry, Understanding Advanced Organic and Analytical Chemistry, Understanding Advanced Chemistry Through Problem Solving, and Understanding Basic Chemistry, retaining the main refutational characteristics of the previous books by strategically planting think-aloud questions to promote conceptual understanding, knowledge construction, reinforcement of important concepts, and discourse opportunities. It is hoped that these essential questions would make learners be more aware of the possible conflict between their prior knowledge, which may be counterintuitive or misleading, with those presented in the text, and hence in the process, make the necessary conceptual changes. In essence, we are trying to effect metaconceptual awareness — awareness of the theoretical nature of one’s thinking — while learners are trying to master the essential chemistry concepts and be more familiar with their applications in problem solving. We hope that by pointing out the differences between possible misconceptions and the actual chemistry content, we can promote such metaconceptual awareness and thus assist the learner to construct a meaningful conceptual model of understanding to meet the necessary assessment criteria. We want our learners to not only know what they know, but at the same time, have a sense of how they know what they know and how their new learnings are interrelated within the discipline. This would enable them to better appreciate and easily apply what they have learned in any novel question that they come across in major examinations.
Lastly, the content of this book would be both informative and challenging to the practices of teachers. This book would certainly illuminate the instruction of all chemistry teachers who strongly believe in teaching chemistry in a meaningful and integrative approach, from the learners’ perspective. The integrated questions that are used as problemsolving tools would definitely prove useful to students in helping them revise fundamental concepts learned from previous chapters, and also grasp the importance and relevancy in the application to their current learning. Collectively, this book offers a vision of understanding and applying chemistry meaningfully and fundamentally from the learners’ approach and to fellow chemistry teachers, we hope that it would help you develop a greater insight into what makes you tick, explain, enthuse, and develop in the course of your teaching.