H. Tavakol, Study of undergraduate chemistry education in Iran 9th European Conference on Research in Chemical Education, Istanbul, Turkey, 6-9 July 2008

Abstract:

The science of Chemistry has old roots in Iran. In order to add support to this claim, it is enough to mention some of the well known Iranian chemists such as Ebn-e-Sina (or Avicenna) [1], Jabir Ibn Haiyan [2] and Zakaryaye Razi [3]. Furthermore, in recent years, not only there have been a high number of scientific entry records of Iranian chemists [4], but also more than 90 percents of authoritative and international Iranian scientists are chemists.

Even so, despite this high scientific record of chemistry in Iran, this scientific improvement has not been accompanied with practical and industrial chemistry development in Iran. Industrial statistics shows that Iranian chemical and related industries have not had a progress proportional with scientific record increasing.

In this research, by gathering opinions of Iranian chemists and chemistry students (as explained in next paragraph), we tried to find the reasons of this misfit without applying any prejudgment. Furthermore, the quantity and quality of theoretical and practical courses in undergraduate academic educations in Iran has been studied. In order to achieve our research aims, first various factors that can have effect on this problem have been considered, and then some questions were designed in questionnaire for finding opinions and reasons. The designed questionnaires were distributed to chemists. After their responses were collected, the data was organized and analyzed to obtain the results. Finally, the most important problems were extracted from analyzing data and they were sorted by their priority and importance for further analysis.  

At last, it seems that this research, if it is not enough and comprehensive for solving the problem, it can be a starting point for a series of systematic research about the misfit of knowledge and industry in Iran. I hope that by planning the same research with our study and by presenting scientific method, in addition to the further improvement of chemistry knowledge, the quantity and quality of academic education in Iran will be so better that it will cause the great improvement in Iran chemistry industries.