Chemistry Education and Research

Science education including chemistry is undergoing changes due to its increasing importance these days, as it faces economic and social challenges. It is possible to register these changes in most European countries as well as the USA. Society requires to prepare the younger generation for the 21st century. We need a workforce with generally higher levels of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) literacy, as well as a suffi cient number of highly gift ed individuals entering scientifi c and engineering careers. To carry out these requirements, it is necessary to change way of education and to find its appropriate content. Experts are trying to defi ne a new paradigm of science education. But in order to be successful, important curricular changes have to be accepted by all of the stakeholders in education: students, their parents, politicians and especially by teachers, who should implement these curricular changes into practice. We will present research findings of the Czech Republic concerning the identifi cation of views on science education, what opinions on current science education are held by stakeholders and what priority should be preferred in their opinion. Th e appropriate content of school chemistry will be discussed.