Online teacher professional development courses fully funded by RSC Education until end of August
In response to the challenges teachers are currently facing, RSC Education has made all nine of its online professional development courses free until the end of August. Six of the nine courses are normally paid for, but will be fully funded by the RSC. Teachers can subscribe to the courses via the online courses webpage and simply need to enter a specific discount code advertised across the site at the checkout. A subscription lasts 12 months, providing teachers with unlimited access to course material at a time when they need it most.
During the courses, teachers learn to teach aspects of a range of key topics to secondary age students confidently and competently, including how to identify misconceptions and explain the core ideas. Teachers can supplement these with three ‘underpinning skills’ courses, which provide techniques and tools to help teachers apply their knowledge in context with students.
Each course provides focused, comprehensive information, as well as resources and ideas to support classroom activities, along with insights into the best pedagogical practice for specific chemistry topics and guidance on teaching core areas of chemistry. All nine courses are useful to both chemistry specialists and non-specialists, experienced teachers and those new to teaching alike.
‘In the current climate remote learning has become an essential aspect of daily life, making these online courses more relevant than ever,’ said Richard Burton, Service Manager, Teacher Professional Development – Education Programmes at the RSC. ‘The courses provide a flexible service that can be used to develop teachers’ skills and expertise anytime or anywhere. At a time when we are all learning a new way of working, I’m sure teachers will be aiming to find the best ways to help their students – and these courses will provide an ideal chance for them to do that.’
Courses
- Quantitative chemistry: Investigate how chemists calculate known quantities of materials. For example, how much product can be made from a known starting material or how much of a given component is present in a sample – and how to teach this to students.
- Energy and change: Learn the vocabulary needed to discuss energy changes with students, how to measure and calculate them and why they occur. Meet different types of energy changes and find out how to use them in energy cycles.
- Redox chemistry: Begin to understand all chemical reactions as a rearrangement of electrons and work toward explaining effectively to students how the conventions we use like oxidation number and electrode potentials work.
- Analytical chemistry: You walk into a chemistry lab and pick up a bottle labelled magnesium oxide. You assume the label matches the identity of the powder inside, but how would you make sure? Learn how to introduce your students to the world of analytical chemistry.
- Materials chemistry: Investigate how materials work and develop an understanding of how and why the use of materials has developed throughout history including the manipulation of desirable properties to suit particular uses, and how to convey this to your students.
- Carbon chemistry: Explore how to teach your students about the special nature of carbon, some of the important classes of compounds it forms and their most important reactions.
Underpinning skills
- Effective pedagogy: For effective learning to take place, a teacher must not only have good subject knowledge but also effective pedagogical skills if they are to get the ideas across to the students. Learn about the core ideas or ‘building blocks’ that are required for effective learning to take place.
- Maths skills: Core mathematical ideas are required for a deep understanding of chemistry. Gain opportunities to practise these mathematical ideas, apply them to chemical contexts and explore some of the common mathematical misconceptions.
- Developing and using models: As new data becomes available, chemists evaluate models they use and, if necessary, go on to refine it by making modifications. In this course you will learn about some of the processes involved in developing, using and assessing a model.
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