Education in Chemistry in the Context of Lifelong Learning

Promoting Life Long Learning of scientific issues is much more difficult, if compared to other subject areas (e.g. humanistic subjects, business management, language learning) as when the compulsory educational path ends up, those that are not interested in science are much more likely to abandon completely the subject. Among the scientific fields, Chemistry is recognised as one of the most problematic subject. That is because Chemistry suffers from a growing unpopularity due to a number of reasons. This paper presents in brief structure and contemporary status of Bulgarian education system with their strong aspects and weak points. An analysis of main obstacles to Lifelong Learning of Scientific Subjects, particularly in chemistry, is also presented. It is based on a survey carried out with chemistry teachers and adult learners under the project “Chemistry is all around us” (Lifelong Learning programme of the EC). Conclusions about new approaches to study Chemistry in the context of Lifelong Learning conception were drawn.