The rise of digital technologies since the second half of the 20th century has transformed every aspect of our lives and has had an ongoing effect even on one of the most conservative fields, education, including chemistry education. During the Covid-19 pandemic, chemistry teachers around the world were forced to teach remotely. This situation provided the authors with an opportunity to investigate how chemistry teachers integrate technology into their teaching, compared with how the research literature suggests that it is done. The theoretical framework used in this explorative qualitative study involves chemistry teachers' technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPACK). In particular, the study focused on different modes of technology integration (MOTIs) in chemistry teaching, which is a part of the teachers' TPACK. In the first stage, five expert chemistry teachers were interviewed so that they could share their extensive experience with technology during online chemistry teaching. Analysis of their interviews revealed that the teachers applied 7 MOTIs in their chemistry teaching. Of these MOTIs, 4 were reported in the chemistry teaching literature: (1) using digital tools for visualization, (2) using open digital databases, (3) using computational methods, and (4) using virtual laboratories and videos of chemical experiments. In addition, the interviews revealed three new MOTIs in chemistry teaching not previously reported: (5) supporting multi-level representations, (6) enabling outreach of chemistry research, and (7) presenting chemistry in everyday life phenomena. In the second research stage, we collected the perspectives of other chemistry teachers (N = 22) regarding the 7 MOTIs. This stage enabled us to validate the findings of the first stage on a wider population and provided data to rate the importance of the seven different MOTIs according to the teachers. We wish to stress that understanding the MOTIs will not only enrich teachers' theoretical knowledge base regarding integrating technology into chemistry teaching-it will also contribute to chemistry teachers' preparation and professional development programs.

One of the primary objectives of an education system is to prepare students for their adult lives by imparting them with the requisite knowledge, qualifications, and skills that will enable them to confront future challenges effectively. A whitepaper published by the Israeli Ministry of Education titled "The Graduate's Image" stresses the importance of incorporating specific skills into the school curriculum. However, there is a lack of educational programs that can transform teaching skills into actual practice. In light of this conclusion, we developed the program "Chemistry, Climate & the Numbers in Between" to foster these skills and produce graduates with the ability to adopt a critical approach and a well-informed perspective toward the world. In this paper, we delineated the cognitive skills developed in the program. The results indicate that innovative program can be utilized to integrate several important skills into a chemistry lesson. The program has the potential to equip and empower future citizens to address and tackle global challenges while utilizing cognitive skills using chemistry knowledge. However, it is important to note that learning in this way requires much more time than a regular lesson does and requires a significant commitment and investment from the teacher.

Imagine being locked in a chemical lab with 4 “bombs” that will detonate within 60 min unless you neutralize them. You now must use your brain, chemical knowledge, intuition, and need a bit of luck to neutralize the bombs and escape unharmed... This is the concept behind “chemical escape”, an activity for high-school students, which brings the extremely popular genre of “escape rooms” into the chemistry classroom; it engages students in learning, increases motivation, and bridges the gap between classroom chemistry and the real world, as well as allows for teamwork and peer learning. A mobile escape room was designed and built in Israel; it consisted of lab-based activities and was suitable for high schools. To date, the activity has been introduced to more than 350 chemistry teachers who then implemented it to over 1500 students. An evaluation questionnaire was developed on the basis of students’ statements of their experience of the escape room (bottom-up); the results indicate that the students were hi...

Imagine being locked in a chemical lab with 4 "bombs" that will detonate within 60 min unless you neutralize them. You now must use your brain, chemical knowledge, intuition, and need a bit of luck to neutralize the bombs and escape unharmed... This is the concept behind "chemical escape", an activity for high-school students, which brings the extremely popular genre of "escape rooms" into the chemistry classroom; it engages students in learning, increases motivation, and bridges the gap between classroom chemistry and the real world, as well as allows for teamwork and peer learning. A mobile escape room was designed and built in Israel; it consisted of lab-based activities and was suitable for high schools. To date, the activity has been introduced to more than 350 chemistry teachers who then implemented it to over 1500 students. An evaluation questionnaire was developed on the basis of students' statements of their experience of the escape room (bottom-up); the results indicate that the students were highly engaged and motivated during the activity, and there was an appreciation for teachers' efforts to run the escape room, an increased feeling of efficacy, and effective teamwork. In this paper we provide a detailed description of all the puzzles and an explanation of how to operate it in a school lab.

Educational research and policy suggest inquiry as one of the most prominent ways of promoting effective science education. However, traditional approaches towards inquiry learning are not always sufficiently motivating for all learners. The EU-funded project, TEMI – Teaching Enquiry with Mysteries Incorporated, suggests that mysterious scientific phenomena introducedviadrama-based pedagogies and showmanship skills could have the potential to engage more students emotionally in science and to entice them to solve the mysteries through inquiry. This paper reports teachers’ views on using storytelling in connection with mysteries in the science classroom. The data stem from a case of chemistry teachers’ continuous professional development within the TEMI project in Israel. Data were collected from 14 teachers by means of a questionnaire, interviews, observations, and written reflection essays. The case discusses teachers’ views on the benefits and difficulties of using story-based science inquiry activities.

This chapter discusses the application of socio-scientific issues (SSI)-based science education in the secondary chemistry classroom. Issues of sustainable development are suggested to contextualize chemistry learning. If this is operated in an SSI-based approach controversial issues from the sustainability debate are used to motivate chemistry learning under thorough inclusion of a societal perspective. Apart from chemistry content learning the lessons focus on an understanding of how society is dealing with developments in chemistry and technology. Examples will be presented from secondary chemistry teaching in Israel and Germany. Alternative fuels and bioplastics will serve as examples. The discussion will show that a combination of SSI-based science teaching with issues of sustainable development offers a fruitful approach to motivate chemistry learning and contribute to the development of general educational skills.

The TEMI science education project aims professional development of secondary school science teachers across Europe. Consisting of 13 partners coordinated by the Queen Mary University of London (teachingmysteries.eu/en/about/), it is funded by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme and it will conclude in 2016. The TEMI consortium strongly believes that students should feel that something mysterious is about to be unveiled every time the science teacher enters the classroom and that students themselves should actively contribute to the process of investigation. TEMI teacher training workshops aim to transform science and mathematics teaching practice across Europe by giving teachers new skills to engage with their students, new teaching resources and extended support needed to effectively introduce inquiry-based learning into their classrooms. TEMI adopts a clear definition of enquiry in terms of a cognitive skillset, and sets out a stepwise progression to push students towards becoming confident enquirers. The project pays equal attention to the affective side of learning. We will help teachers to foster a deep motivation to learn, by bringing to the fore the sense of mystery, exploration and discovery that is at the core of all scientific practice. All TEMI actions are based around core scientific concepts and emotionally engaging activities of solving mysteries and exploring the unknown.

One of the key goals of science education is to provide students with the ability to construct arguments - reasoning and thinking critically in a scientific context. Over the years, many studies have been conducted on constructing arguments in science teaching, but only a few of them have dealt with studying argumentation in the science laboratory in general and in the chemistry laboratory in particular. Our research focuses on the process in which students construct arguments in the chemistry laboratory while conducting different types of inquiry experiments. The experiments that were assessed for their argumentation level differed in their level of complexity. It was found that the more complex experiments served as a better platform for developing arguments as well as regarding their relative numbers. Moreover, we identified a number of characteristics during the discourse that serve as a catalyst for raising arguments: asking questions and unexpected results obtained in the experiments.

The issue consists of six papers. In all the six studies there has been done an effort to find out what should be the best ways to motivate students to study science, and to gain inquiry skills. Some studies (e.g. Fraser, 1982) revealed a positive correlation and a causal relationship between achievement in science and attitude constructs, whereas others revealed no clear (or negative) relationship between attitudes towards learning science and achievement (Osborne & Dillon, 2008). International studies have shown that students’ attitudes towards scientific disciplines depend on the extent of their active participation in the learning process. The main topics of the six studies of this issue are: (1) The link between formal and non-formal learning in science education, (2) students’ linguistic heterogeneity in science, (3) poster exhibition as an effective means of support for teachers to introduce contemporary chemistry topics to high school students, (4) argumentation in the chemistry laboratory, (5) chemistry, industry, and the environment in the eyes of the individual and society, and (6) the inclusion of students with special needs in science classes teaching them inquiry-based activities. All the papers deal with studies which have the similar objectives: How can we involve as many students as possible in science studies? How can we bridge the gap between formal and non-formal education? How can create a productive and encouraging learning environment?

One of the goals of science education is to provide students with the ability to construct arguments—reasoning and thinking critically in a scientific context. Over the years, many studies have been conducted on constructing arguments in science teaching, but only few of them have dealt with studying argumentation in the laboratory. Our research focuses on the process in which students construct arguments in the chemistry laboratory while conducting various types of experiments. It was found that inquiry experiments have the potential to serve as an effective platform for formulating arguments, owing to the features of this learning environment. The discourse during inquiry-type experiments was found to be rich in arguments, whereas that during confirmatory-type experiments was found to be sparse in arguments. The arguments, which were developed during the discourse of an open inquiry experiment, focus on the hypothesis-building stage, analysis of the results, and drawing appropriate conclusions.