Research in Chemical Education - the Third Branch of Our Profession

Abstract

Almost everyone who teaches chemistry in the K-12 system (or its foreign equivalents) and almost everyone employed as a faculty member in a chemistry department qualifies as a chemical educator: we are chemists interested in helping others understand chemistry. One way to look at the chemical education community is to divide our activities into a spectrum of three intertwined branches: instruction, practice, and research. The branches intertwine because many of us are active in more than one branch.Instruction is familiar to all of us. Even if we do not engage in instruction, we have been on the receiving end. Instructors use their knowledge to assist their clientele’s learning. It is not difficult to identify the largest group of instructors: we are teachers in K-12 classes or faculty in post-secondary classrooms and teaching laboratories at all levels (from technical schools and two-year colleges to medical and graduate schools). Graduate teaching assistants, who bear a significant part of the responsibility for delivering instruction at many institutions, constitute another group. However, instruction occurs in settings other than the classroom and teaching laboratory. Tutors who staff learning centers are instructors. Research directors who direct the laboratory work of undergraduate and graduate students are instructors. The chemical education component of their activities lies in the transmission of attitudes, skills, and habits of inquiry to their students.Many chemical educators are practitioners. Practitioners coordinate or direct programs and develop the tools and methods used to teach chemistry. The obvious practitioners are directors of general chemistry or directors of teaching laboratories. Others of us include software developers, textbook authors, and those who develop laboratory experiments or lecture demonstrations. Less obvious may be those involved in curriculum development, outreach, and teacher preparation. We should also include institutional staff at the ACS, NSF, and government departments of education in addition to laboratory managers and many other professional staff at post-secondary institutions. Another important and overlooked group are reviewers. Their work goes almost unnoticed, yet a thoughtful review can greatly improve a textbook, laboratory experiment, or journal article.A smaller group of chemical educators do research in chemical education. Those engaged in chemical education research examine what works and why or why not. Some are members of schools of education; others are members of chemistry departments. Chemical education researchers can provide tested, theory-based, or data-based insights and methodologies to the chemical education community. We focus on a variety of basic research questions. How and why do students learn? Why is chemistry difficult, even for many good students? What works to facilitate effective learning