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CONTINUITY
IN THE SYSTEM OF PERMANENT CHEMICAL EDUCATION:
SCHOOL - HIGHER EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION
E.I. Vasilevskaya,
O.I. Sechko
Ensuring continuity between secondary and higher education curricula is an important task when it comes to a changeover from the former to the latter. It is feasible to ensure continuity in the selection of educational content at various stages, on the basis of necessity to form the quality and type of activities required by society, with due regard for the prospects of scientific and technological development on the one hand, and the students' needs on the other. Secondary school must improve the content of education, making it suit both the requirements of modern life and those of high school, since a sufficiently high level of knowledge and abilities is one of the vital elements of secondary school graduates' readiness for continuing their education at a higher educational institution. Therefore, one must elicit not only a competence level that is sufficient to enroll in a higher education institution, but also the volume of material that is necessary to master a further education curriculum successfully. At the same time, a precondition for continuity realization is the organization of the education process at the high school in view of the knowledge and abilities mastered by the students at a secondary general education school. This ensures psychological, professional and sociocultural adaptation of students at various stages of continuous education.
It is not easy to ensure continuity of content between different levels and stages of education in real life. E.g., in the USA, two years out of a four year cycle of studying for a bachelor's degree are spent filling gaps in the students' general educational development. It should be reminded that during the Soviet period, the secondary school curriculum included a necessary volume of knowledge for studying at a higher educational institution. It ensured a wide choice and equal opportunities of access to higher education for school graduates. The experience of post-Soviet education demonstrates that graduates of the majority of secondary schools have not mastered general abilities and skills in their subject (in particular, chemistry) to a sufficient extent; they find it somewhat difficult to continue studying their subject at a higher educational establishment. The system of centralized state testing undoubtedly has its advantages, but it presupposes the focusing of secondary school students and higher school applicants on doing tests only. Such an orientation hinders the development of abilities to generalize, analyze, master experimental work skills and perform creative tasks.
These authors' experience of working with first-year students of the chemical, geographical and biological departments, as well as with the pre-entry education department trainees of the Byelorussian State University (hereinafter, the BSU) and high school teachers and professors at refresher courses, testifies that changing over from secondary school to high school in the chemical education system requires a higher level of chemistry studies at secondary school. In the
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process of preparation for chemistry tests, secondary school graduates insufficiently master the ability of writing chemical equations in molecular, complete and abbreviated ion forms, of systemically characterizing the properties of nonorganic compound classes, of answering topical questions logically, of finding links between facts and phenomena, and of working with course books. Therefore, the Achilles heel of many of the best secondary school graduates is not an insufficient volume of knowledge but their inability to use it creatively, and in particular, to understand the meaning of questions that were formulated in a non-standard way, to correlate abstract concepts (the symbols of chemical elements and the formulas of chemical substances) with actual chemical reality, to find the difference between important and nonessential things, to analyze and to correlate materials, and to articulate their viewpoints.
Continuity of chemical education from the school to university stage can be achieved by mastering content beyond the limits of standard secondary education during extracurricular activities at secondary schools, with a system of out-ofschool activities, during preparations for academic competitions, research and practice conferences, as well as during pre-entry courses and remedial courses at higher educational institutions. As these authors presume, [1] when they consider the specific nature of chemical education in the secondary school - pre-entry department - higher educational institution, the systematic invariant of chemical science must be presented at all levels of continuous education. "Whereupon the progress to be realized must be the traditional one in reverse: from the systematic invariant of chemical science at higher educational institution level - to the preentry department (through the respective simplifications), and thus - to school. Therefore, the full-scale content of chemical science, and its systemic invariant, will be presented at each stage of continuous education. The only difference is that at earlier stages the systemic content is presented in broader strokes, and it becomes more and more detailed at the subsequent ones. ... At the stage of independent professional activity, fundamental knowledge becomes a specialist's theoretical outlook on the reality of professional chemistry"[1, p. 29].
As the experience accumulated at the BSU demonstrates, one of the ways of ensuring continuity in the permanent chemistry education system is by organizing studies for prospective students on one hand, and the introduction of a remedial chemistry course for students of non-chemistry departments on the other. Prospective students are instructed both at the chemistry department (permanent "Young Chemist" school, short-term lecture courses on the complex issues of chemistry) and at the pre-entry education department of the BSU. E.g., studying chemistry at the pre-entry education department of the BSU is focused on the development and in-depth study of the school course content, eliciting causal relationships within it. These measures permit the trainees to study a connected subject, and to choose the optimum ways of preparing for the entry examinations. To a large extent, the course makes up for the gaps of basic school education, gives additional knowledge to the trainees, and forms abilities and activity methods connected with solving practical tasks: doing tests, describing chemical transformations, solving calculation tasks. The remedial chemistry course for first-year students of the BSU geographical and biological departments was established with the purpose of filling the gap between the level of their training and the
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knowledge level students need to study successfully at university. Secondary school graduates lack or have underdeveloped general educational abilities: to formulate an answer or to draw up a plan for a topical answer, to elicit the substance, or to establish intra-object links. While secondary school students who prepare for entry into higher educational institutions are mainly "drilled" to do tests, university students need to solve tasks and do exercises in written form, in order to formulate oral answers.
Adapting to a lecture and seminar educational system is a problem for many first-year higher education students. Therefore, it is possible to introduce some elements of educational technologies used at the higher levels of education into the educational practice of secondary schools. Continuity of education at this stage can be realized, e.g., through engaging higher educational institution teaching staff to work at secondary schools, university professors' participation in the preparation of secondary school subjects curricula and aids, etc. It should be noted that the content continuity problem within whose framework further development and deepening of the principal conceptual systems in any science takes place must be solved, inter alia, by coordinating educational standards, curricula, workbooks, etc. It will allow us, firstly, to find out and fill in gaps at each educational level, and secondly, to ensure preparation of specialists who have a certain level of competence. For instance, making the general cultural component in the chemical education more prominent is caused by increasing "chemicalization" of material and informational space, the significance of the issues of chemical materials and preparations utilization in everyday life, the role of chemical knowledge in the matters of environment and health protection, the fact that informational flows are becoming increasingly saturated with chemical data and terms.
We should note finally that the tendency to differentiate chemistry as an educational subject manifests itself most prominently at the changeover from the secondary to the higher education, when the volume of material being studied increases, and new sections are added. In this situation, we must clearly articulate the requirements concerning the volume and depth of information to be studied, elicit the issues from the secondary school course that need refreshing, and take account of the students' specialization in their educational subjects.
References
1. Агапова, О. И. Реализуется системно-контекстный подход (из опыта работы подготовительного отделения) / О. И. Агапова, В. И. Швец, А. А. Вербицкий // Вестн. высш. школы. - 1987. - № 12. - С. 28 - 34.
Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translations Bureau
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