The current mission and vision of the CERC, which were established in 2018, are copied below:
Purpose: The mission of the Chemical Education Research (CER) Committee is to inform educators about chemical education research and to foster scholarship and encourage improvement in the quality of chemistry education research.
Vision: The CER committee endeavors to provide 1) a variety of avenues for chemical educators to learn about chemical education research, 2) platforms for the dissemination of research, and 3) highlights of work and methods within the field.
The current leadership of the CERC (Alena Moon, Nikita Burrows, and Ryan Stowe) have several reservations about the historic mission and vision of this committee. These include:
- Most of our communications are monologues rather than dialogues (except the webinar)
- We spend little time/effort on trying to build connections with other scholarly communities (e.g., science education, STS, educational leadership & policy)
- We do not position folks who are not ChemEd researchers as knowers
We question whether the historic emphasis of the committee on legitimizing chemistry education research to other chemists is the best use of the committee’s time and effort. Reconsidering what the focus of this committee could and should be will be the focus of activities undertaken during the next reporting period.
Since the last reporting period, the CERC has:
- Coordinated a chemistry education research symposium for the F24 ACS meeting
- Begun planning for symposia at the Sp25 ACS meeting
- Planned an informational presentation for the “Inside DivCHED” symposium at the BCCE as well as two Birds of a Feather conversations to follow
- Begun conversations related to the mission and vision of the committee (at our Sp24 committee meeting)
Future committee plans will be outgrowths of conversations to be held at the BCCE. Committee leadership will unpack potential issues with the historic mission, vision, and programming of the committee and work with community members to 1) refashion a more appropriate mission and vision, and 2) consider how we might open space for useful dialogue between researcher and practitioner communities that appropriately recognize the experience and expertise of practitioner partners.
Next Meeting
While we will meet informally several times at the upcoming BCCE, our next official committee meeting with be Sunday, August 18th from 2-4pm Mountain Time. This meeting will be held via Zoom and joinable via the following link: https://uwmadison.zoom.us/j/99430662004. An agenda for this meeting will be formulated after BCCE conversations.