Too Spicy? Spices as a Context for Comprehensive School Chemistry Education

Abstract

Many institutions of higher education are strugling with student lack of interest to continue their studies in natural sciences. The interest also seems to be diveded between girls/biology and boys/physics. Students consider research in natural sciences as important, but do not consider science as interesting. The lack of contexts for discussing the concepts of science makes them abstract, hard to understand and boring. Spices are one theme, that can be utilized in more contextual science education to provide links to everyday life of the students and increase their interest in science. In a questionnaire regarding the use of web-material on chemistry of spices, teachers and students hoped that the pages would be easy to navigate and include wide variety of examples about spices and chemistry.