Narratives as Tools in Designing the School Chemistry Curriculum

This article is based on results from a research project which focused on chemistry teachers and student narratives from lived experience. The purpose was to find a way to make abstract chemistry more meaningful. The project began with six experienced teachers who used narratives and stories as a didactic tool. These narratives stemmed from the teachers individual lived experience and thus were designed differently. Later, interviews with students showed that five adult students and six younger students all appreciated the use of narratives as ameaning-making activity to help them grasp the abstract subject. The most interesting finding was that the students revealed several narratives from their own lives where the theories of chemistry played an important role in explaining events that otherwise had been mysterious to them. Thus the teachers and students showed that the ancient human method of sharing experience through narrative is still alive and useful in chemistry education.