Development of content understandings using student journals in an elementary education majors course

CHED 425

Donald J. Wink, dwink@uic.edu and Michael Dianovsky, dianovsk@uic.edu. Department of Chemistry (MC 111), University of Illinois at Chicago, 845 W. Taylor Street, Chicago, IL 60607
This paper describes the use of journals in a general education chemistry course for elementary education majors. The particular structure of the journal involves students' description of their understanding of a topic, its development, and its connection to an aspect of their lives. This becomes the basis of instructor feedback to correct student misunderstandings, validate their efforts to use metacognition, and shape their understanding of the meaning of content for themselves. The ways in which this aligns with principles of student identity development presented by Baxter Magolda and others will be discussed, with a particular understanding of how the writing changes to reflect an improved "voice" in the content domain.