Investigating Interactions in Chemistry Laboratories

Using Swivl robots and mounted iPads, this line of research aims to explore various interactions in the instructional laboratory settings. How do students troubleshoot experiments? How do graduate teaching assistants promote chemistry sensemaking and reasoning? In what ways (if any) are practices like modeling, argumentation, and connecting with everyday phenomena leveraged in the classroom? We primarily use video research principles and ethnography to understand how actors navigate established laboratory norms and values. Our findings aim to identify productive ways to circumvent obstacles that otherwise may hinder learners and instructors’ laboratory experiences. In addition, we hope that this research provides new insights on the nature of chemistry education. There is more to learning chemistry than just getting a good grade or leaving the laboratory as quickly as possible. Findings will contribute to graduate teaching assistant training programs and chemistry faculty professional development on equitable, justice-centered teaching practices.

Importing Good Game Design Principles into Chemistry

Those who play games, especially at the competitive level, are more akin to chemists than one may presume. The processes of experimentation and redesign, the sense of community among players, and the adaptability to respond in new situations are goals that chemistry education research community has long sought. Consider the process in which you learn how to play a new game. I would imagine that your experience potentially more intuitive and rewarding than making sense of an experimental protocol or manipulating glassware. Well-crafted games offer a multitude of good game design principles that may be worth importing into chemistry curricular design. Just-in-time vs. on-demand feedback, productive failure, and agency via ownership are just a few considerations that may dramatically change how chemistry laboratories are perceived and experienced. This research aims to distill the theories of good game design and identify ways of making novel and relevant contributions to formative/summative assessments, teaching practices, and learning activities unique to the instructional laboratory setting. Topics of interest include investigating how students conceptualize learning from mistakes and the nature of reflection.

Leveraging Rhizomatic Analyses for Chemistry Education Research

In this picture, you see a tree on the left and a root system on the right. The tree represents arborescence, a linear process of thought that is unidirectional (i.e., how a tree grows vertically). Contextualized in education, an arborescent approach would assume a teacher following a set script to facilitate students abiding by classroom norms as they gradually arrive to an objective truth. Roles of teacher and student are clearly defined as the former is expected to transmit knowledge to the latter. On the other hand, the root system offers a more transformative conception of teaching and learning. Known as rhizomatics, this root system assumes a non-linear philosophy in which teaching practice must be contextually situated, historically contingent, and relationally produced (i.e., how roots are connected horizontally with no explicit start nor end). From this perspective, teaching becomes more inquiry-based, dialogical, and problem-based in which the lines that delineate teachers and students are blurred. Students take more of an active role in constructing knowledge while teachers learn and respond to their students via disciplined improvisation. Using rhizomatic analyses is transformation, identifying hidden obstacles that may hinder what learners and instructors do, foregrounding aspects that are conventionally ignored in chemistry, and centering real-world contexts to recontextualize chemistry sensemaking and reasoning. Our goal is to introduce this cutting-edge philosophy, instigate new discussions, and broaden perspectives that are productive for chemistry education research.