Systemic Tasks in the Teaching of Inorganic Chemistry

Abstract

The Systemic Approach in Teaching and Learning (SATL) involves an arrangement of concepts/problems into diagrams, which represent how they are linked. The goal of this paper is to present the systemic approach in teaching chemistry and provide examples of systemic tasks in terms of this approach on a selected topic from inorganic chemistry, i.e. s-block elements and their compounds. In accordance with SATL, systemic tasks in chemistry aim to verify and develop students' ability to determine the relationships and links between reactants and reaction conditions, as well as their ability to write down chemical reactions in the form of chemical equations. The paper compares the traditional approach to the creation of tasks, assignments, and the resulting mind maps with the systemic tasks. Thus, the evaluation of teachers' opinions on the pros and cons of the systemic tasks implementation into teaching are presented.