Introduction
The current mission and vision of the CERC, which were established in 2018, are copied below. This is a reiteration from the previous report:
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