Innovative chemistry teaching and learning for sustainable national development: Addressing contemporary national challenges.

Abstract

The Nigerian chemical education has been faced with many challenges. One of these challenges is the methodology of teaching used by chemistry teachers. The old methods of teaching like lecture and demonstration methods did not favor the 21st century learners in chemical science which as a result contributed significantly to the poor performance of chemical students. It is against this background that this paper critically discussed the concept of innovation in chemistry education, the role of technology-based teaching and the weakness of lecture and demonstration methods to chemistry students. How ever, innovative teaching pedagogy such as Peer Instruction (PI), the use of Audio-Visual (AV) supplement, student centered learning, improvisation and cooperative learning were briefly discussed as an alternative. This paper recommend ed among others, the research studies is aimed at devising a better method of teaching chemistry using Peer Instruction (PI) and Cooperative Learning (CL) in Nigerian schools at all levels should be carried out in chemistry education to ascer tain their effectiveness.