Framing Student and Faculty Stress in Education: A Proposed Science Analogy

Chemistry teachers have long used analogies that relate chemical topics (a target) to more commonly encountered situations (an analog) for helping students understand new ideas in chemistry. This rich teaching strategy has been widely used and reported but has been a unidirectional activity. Chemists seek nonchemical analogies to help students visualize a new concept. It can be argued that, with consideration for a group of chemistry educators, shared chemistry knowledge can be used as the analog to consider nonchemistry experiences associated with teaching the subject. With this premise in mind, a way to frame an understanding of the role of stress in teaching and learning chemistry in the present time is proposed.