Chemistry education research has sought to understand why students struggle in organic chemistry courses. Beyond the volume and difficulty of the material taught in this course, there are also affective factors, such as attitude toward chemistry, that can influence how students perform. Studies have documented cases in which students of…

This article presents the development, description, application, and discussion of an analytical framework to examine students' drawings of scientific concepts and processes. Student-generated representation, particularly drawing, is increasingly emphasised as an important learning strategy to help students reason, explain, and demonstrate their…

An introductory organic chemistry course is a gate keeper to the science pipeline. Instructors can improve student learning by making deliberate efforts to understand and accommodate the various levels of classroom diversity. The changes in the demographics of the United States and the national push to cultivate women and minorities in the…

This work combines laboratory quantitative analysis of colored solutions and common devices for digital imaging (digital or web cameras or mobile phones, i.e., smartphones). ColorX software, specially designed for this study, was used for data collection and analysis in order to calculate concentrations of colored solutions from measured RGB…

Chemistry education research (CER) as a field is inherently interdisciplinary and has traditionally borrowed ideas, frameworks, and methodologies from other fields, such as anthropology, psychology, cognitive science, and science education more broadly. In this paper we encourage researchers to continue this tradition by utilizing the rich body of…

The ability to handle chemicals safely is a key aspect of the learning development of students studying chemistry; however, there have been no previously reported investigations of the quantity of chemicals spilled by students during lab experiments. Therefore, the first part of this article reports the assessment of the volume of chemicals…

This paper describes two studies comparing students' explanations of an oxidation-reduction reaction after viewing the chemical demonstration and one of two different particulate-level computer animations. In the first study, the two animations differed primarily in the complexity of the visual images. Students viewing the more simplified…

In an ideal instructional context, one would expect the components (teacher, content and instructional strategy) to operate in harmony, in tandem and in a complementary manner. When these components are not in harmony, they are said to be in a state of 'instructional contextual contestation'. The components compete rather than complement each…

The aim of this study is to determine the pre-service teachers' perceptions of atom and atomic structure through a word association test. It is important to concretize the concepts having a significant influence on the learning of subjects. Through this concretization, students' understanding of the concepts and accordingly of the subjects is…

The present study reports an empirical investigation into concept formation of young children. Based on interviews conducted before and after participating in a playfully enacted chemistry lesson at a culture center, it is analyzed how 6-year-old children conceptualize water, molecule, and chemistry. Theoretically, the study is informed by…

The International Union of Pure & Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) launched a global project in 2017 to infuse systems thinking into chemistry education, motivated in part by the desire to help equip chemists and citizens to better address the complex, global challenges our society currently faces. One important early outcome of the IUPAC Systems…

Various international perspectives from selected regions where substantial work is being done on green and sustainable chemistry education emphasize a systems thinking framework. Common to most of the perspectives is the inclusion of more global paradigms involving economic, environmental, political, and social aspects as fundamental issues in the…

Phosphates are essential components of any efficient fertilizer. Natural phosphate rock is, however, not available in every part of the world. According to the European Commission, phosphate rock has high economic importance as well as a certain supply risk--at least for Europe. For these reasons, environmental technology research has received a…

The development of students' interest in school science activities, their understanding of central chemical concepts, and the interplay between both constructs across Grades 5-11 were analyzed in a cross-sectional paper-and-pencil study (N = 2,510, mean age 11-17 years). Previous empirical findings indicate that students' knowledge increases over…

A storytelling approach has been seen as a powerful way to teach science and arouse interest and promote positive attitudes toward learning science in the early years. The purpose of our study was to determine how middle school students -- Key Stage 3 (KS3) aged 12-14 in Portuguese schools -- experienced learning chemistry through storytelling and…