Abstract
This article offers a viewpoint regarding the current status of chemistry education research (CER) as a scholarly field within science education, and suggests priorities for future directions of work in the field. The article begins by briefly considering what makes something a discrete field of activity, and what makes such a field ‘scientific’. This provides a basis for understanding and evaluating CER, and informs a consideration of imperatives and priorities for progressing the field. In particular, it is suggested one emphasis should be on areas of work which can be considered ‘inherent’ to CER as they arise from essential aspects of chemistry teaching and learning, and some examples of such inherent research foci (the ‘chemist’s triplet’; models in chemistry; chemical explanations) are briefly discussed.
Highlights
CER as a field This article discusses chemistry education research (CER) as a field, and considers both why it is reasonable to consider CER as a discrete field and how this has implications for both what is considered to count as CER – such that not all educational research carried out in chemistry teaching and learning contexts (CTLC) should be considered inherently CER – and for setting priorities in the field
Space here does not allow the development or augmentation of these examples, but hopefully they sufficiently make the point: for CER to progress as a field (i) it needs to take as strong foci the particular issues of teaching and learning chemistry, that is, those issues that are specific, or especially pronounced, or at least need to be understood within particular contexts, in the practice of chemistry teaching; and (ii) there needs to be a programmatic flavour to much of the work undertaken - to enable ready communication between researchers; to facilitate studies to clearly build iteratively on what has gone before; and to allow the CER community to make evaluations of which lines of work are progressive, and so worthy of attention and resourcing
CER benefits from cross-fertilisation with other disciplines, and the ‘essential tension’ needs to be held in balance
Summary
CER as a field This article discusses chemistry education research (CER) as a field, and considers both why it is reasonable to consider CER as a discrete field (rather than just a domain within science education research) and how this has implications for both what is considered to count as CER – such that not all educational research carried out in chemistry teaching and learning contexts (CTLC) should be considered inherently CER – and for setting priorities in the field.
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