Teaching chemical formulation: Comments on the comments

Abstract

This paper analyzes the comments that were published (Olivares Campiño, 2014) in response to a previous article of mine on the teaching of chemical formulation in the secondary school classroom (Fernández González, 2013). It highlights the disparity between the science teaching approach in my article and the discipline-oriented approach in the comments responding to my article. The author of the response interprets the differences between the two approaches as errors when these differences actually stem from a process of didactic transposition that adapts expert knowledge to the needs of secondary school students. This paper defends the coherence of my proposal for the teaching of chemical formulation, which is based on the historical atomic model and the concept of valence. This proposal is thus a science classroom model, which can change and evolve as the student reaches higher academic levels. Without a single reference to PCK, the response to my article mainly focuses on aspects related to norms and standards as well as to the discipline itself. This paper satisfactorily addresses these criticisms and underlines that formulation is a means of learning Chemistry and should not be conceived as an end in itself.