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Chemistry and narrative: Short stories and school chemistry

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Abstract

Science competitions can provide rich sources of data about students' knowledge and attitudes. The Australian National Chemistry Week's Short Story Competition generates a large number of fictional narratives that can be analysed for the authors' views of the place and relevance of chemistry in their lives, as well as providing an opportunity to integrate chemistry knowledge with their writing skills. This paper reports on the purposes of the competition, responses in terms of the short stories received and discusses some of the educational implications for the use of stories in the chemistry classroom.

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Correspondence to Paul Strube.

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Strube, P. Chemistry and narrative: Short stories and school chemistry. Research in Science Education 26, 247–255 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02356435

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