Chemistry Education Research and Practice Blog

You are invited to submit contributions to the Chemistry Education Research and Practice (CERP) special themed issue on visualisations and representations in chemistry education, scheduled for publication in autumn 2019.

2019 themed issue

As advancements in technology continue to unfold, visualisations and, more broadly, representations in chemistry education have evolved into sophisticated representations that take into consideration experimental and computational findings as well as research on learning. Historically, early studies on visualisations were focused on how viewing pictures or animations of entities at the submicroscopic level affect conceptual understanding of the invisible world of chemistry. Consequently, much research was devoted to the manner in which visualisations could help students connect the particulate nature of matter with macroscopic processes such as laboratory experiments and demonstrations.

Educators recognise that visualisations and representations can help students form bridges from the particulate level to the symbolic level associated with equations and graphical or mathematical models. In essence, a primary goal of instructional visualisations is to assist students to develop more expert-like understanding of chemistry. Yet, visualisations have been shown to be limited in their bridging capacity and affordances. Not all students are able to understand what they view or to comprehend the complex processes portrayed through dynamic models.

These limitations have led designers to consider how to engage learners cognitively with visualisations through interactive features. For example, simulations allow students to manipulate variables and to observe the consequences of their actions, especially at the submicroscopic level. Studies connected to cognitive load and how complexity and accuracy can best be used to portray the submicroscopic level are also being carried out. Research studies have continued to explore how visualisations in three dimensions compare to those in two dimensions, and how virtual reality and augmented reality can assist learning and understanding of structural and functional entities. In addition, studies are exploring how students make sense of the submicroscopic level through their hand-drawn representations, oral explanations and their ability to reflect metacognitively on their understanding. Furthermore, eye-tracking technology has given researchers the ability to identify where students focus while they view visualisations.

This special themed issue intends to illustrate how the design and study of learning from visualisations and representations in chemistry education have progressed. It also intends to offer insight into the implications for our teaching practice.

Possible topics may include but are not limited to:

• Development and design principles of animations/simulations/virtual and augmented reality tools
• The use of drawings and storyboarding to make sense of representations
• Tools for using animation development and understanding student-generated animations
• 2D and 3D visualisations, 3D printing, haptics, or novel visualisation tools
• Design and use of representations for students with special needs (eg visually impaired students)
• Connecting representations to experimentation (eg laboratory and demonstrations)
• Eye-tracking research advancements
• How visualisations/representations can help us better understand ‘big data’
• The influence of chemistry visualisations in chemistry courses at school, college, and university levels including in specialist courses and when learning chemistry concepts taught in cognate subjects
• The role of visualisations in understanding models and connections to scale
• Development of metavisualisation skills
• Integration of different types of representations in teaching chemistry at macroscopic, symbolic, and particulate levels
• Qualitative and quantitative analytical methods for addressing learning and teaching with visualisations and representations

Articles should:

• Align with the principles and quality criteria of the journal
• Provide an argument for new knowledge supported by careful analysis of evidence
• Be situated in existing literature, and either report the meaningful analysis of carefully collected research data or the rigorous evaluation of innovative practice

Guest editors

The guest editors for this themed issue are:

• Resa Kelly (Department of Chemistry, San José State University, San José, US)
• Sevil Akaygün (Department of Mathematics and Science Education, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey)

Submission of manuscripts

Manuscripts should be submitted in the format required using the ScholarOne online manuscript submission platform.

General guidance on whether the theme of a contribution falls within the scope of the journal may be found in a published editorial. Enquiries concerning the suitability of topics of potential contributions for the theme issue should be sent directly by email to one of the theme editors: Resa Kelly (resa.kelly@sjsu.edu) or Sevil Akaygün (sevil.akaygun@boun.edu.tr).

Acceptance and publication

Manuscripts should be submitted by Monday 14 January 2019 to be eligible for consideration in the themed issue. All manuscripts will be subject to editorial screening and peer review. Manuscripts received after the deadline may still be considered for the theme issue, but the usual peer review process will not be compromised to reach decisions on publication. If such articles are accepted for publication too late to be included in the theme issue, they will be included in a subsequent issue.

As with other CERP contributions, articles intended for the theme issue will be published as advance articles online as soon as they have been set and proofs have been checked, ahead of publication in the theme issue itself. Authors also have the option of accepted manuscript publication, where a pdf of their accepted manuscript is published immediately after acceptance (to be substituted by the professionally set and proofed copy once available).

You are invited to submit contributions to the Chemistry Education Research and Practice (CERP) special themed issue on learning progressions and teaching sequences in chemistry education, scheduled for publication in autumn 2018.

2018 themed issue

Students’ learning development has been researched for decades in several traditions, including Didaktiks and teaching experiments, theory of mind and metacognitive development, conceptual change and epistemology, and sociocultural development. Insights from these lines of research have contributed to a surge in the past decade of research on learning progressions and teaching sequences.

Learning progressions are generally defined as hypotheses of pathways of learning over an extended period of time (eg years) that can be validated empirically. Teaching sequences are plans for instruction that guide learning through intended pathways. While the entry points of studying learning progressions and teaching sequences may differ, they share the goal of tackling large concepts fundamental to the domain – in our case, in chemistry. They intersect in at least two important ways: it is assumed some learning pathways are better than others, and the assessment of learning is tantamount to validating proposed models.

There has also been considerable criticism of research on learning progressions and teaching sequences. Critics have pointed out learning is complex, therefore difficult to reduce to linear, monotonic growth; learning is idiosyncratic, therefore inextricably tied to context; learning is not separable from epistemological beliefs or affects, therefore demands attention to these; and learning depends on instruction, therefore the variety in teachers’ own content knowledge, beliefs about instruction, and assessment stances needs to be taken into account.

This themed issue intends to illustrate the bandwidth of research on learning progressions and teaching sequences in the domain of chemistry, varying across educational levels, and focusing on a variety of aspects relevant to these areas of study. Together, the papers can offer perspective on both advantages and pitfalls in the construction of learning pathways in chemistry and approaches to the assessment of learning in chemistry that make possible the validation of models that can advance chemistry education.

Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Design-based cycles involving various stakeholders in developing learning progressions and teaching sequences (eg participatory action research cycles)
• Comparisons of different developmental patterns of learning (eg linear v recursive)
• Incorporation of pedagogical and structural features associated with the learning environment (eg epistemology, teachers’ assessment stances) into the design and study of learning progressions and teaching sequences
• Qualitative and quantitative analytical methods for addressing idiosyncrasies and variety in learning pathways
• Teaching experiments to foster students’ abilities to reason in different contexts in learning pathways
• Theoretical and methodological treatments that address aspects (eg granularity, scope) of the usefulness of the products of these research efforts

Articles should:

• Align with the principles and quality criteria of the journal
• Provide an argument for new knowledge supported by careful analysis of evidence
• Be situated in existing literature, and either report the meaningful analysis of carefully collected research data or the rigorous evaluation of innovative practice

Guest editors

The guest editors for this themed issue are:

• Hannah Sevian (Department of Chemistry, University of Massachusetts Boston, US)
• Sascha Bernholt (Leibniz-Institute for Science and Mathematics Education, University of Kiel, Germany)

Submission of manuscripts

Manuscripts should be submitted in the format required using the ScholarOne online manuscript submission platform.

General guidance on whether the theme of a contribution falls within the scope of the journal may be found in a published editorial. Enquiries concerning the suitability of topics of potential contributions for the theme issue should be sent directly by email to one of the theme editors: Hannah Sevian or Sascha Bernholt.

Acceptance and publication

Manuscripts should be submitted by Monday 15 January 2018 to be eligible for consideration in the theme issue. All manuscripts will be subject to editorial screening and peer review. Manuscripts received after the deadline may still be considered for the theme issue, but the usual peer review process will not be compromised to reach decisions on publication. If such articles are accepted for publication too late to be included in the theme issue, they will be included in a subsequent issue.

As with other CERP contributions, articles intended for the theme issue will be published as advance articles online as soon as they have been set and proofs have been checked, ahead of publication in the theme issue itself. Authors also have the option of accepted manuscript publication, where a pdf of their accepted manuscript is published immediately after acceptance (to be substituted by the professionally set and proofed copy once available).

This call for papers is available as a pdf.

Themed Issue: Autumn 2016

Contributions are invited for a themed, peer-reviewed issue on Language and the teaching and learning of chemistry

For a long time language and science in general were two distinct domains that were seen as opposite to each other. However, the importance of language connected to science education in general and chemistry in particular is well known, especially when we are discussing the teaching and learning of the language(s) of chemistry or the linguistic heterogeneity of students. In this special themed issue we will focus on the learning and teaching of chemistry considering the role of language.

Visit www.rsc.li/AboutCERP for full details.

Guest Editors: Silvija Markic¹ and Peter Childs²,

1 Institute of Didactics of Science Education – University of Bremen, Germany

2 University of Limerick, Ireland

Submission of papers

Manuscripts should be submitted by 11 January 2016 for consideration in the theme issue. All manuscripts will be subject to editorial screening and peer review.

Enquiries concerning the suitability of contributions should be sent directly by email to Silvija Markic:  smarkic@uni-bremen.de and/or Peter Childs:  peter.childs@ul.ie

Chemistry Education Research and Practice (CERP)

CERP is the Royal Society of Chemistry’s international peer-reviewed journal for teachers, researchers and other practitioners of chemistry education. Editor:  Dr Keith S Taber, University of Cambridge, UK

The journal is sponsored by the RSC’s Education Division and

• is free to access
• has no page or submission charges for authors.

Coverage includes

• research, and reviews of research, in chemistry education
• effective practice in the teaching of chemistry
• analyses of issues of direct relevance to chemistry education