No abstract

Conducting qualitative research in any discipline warrants two actions: accessing participants and eliciting their ideas. In chemistry education research, survey techniques have been used to increase access to participants and diversify samples. Interview tasks (such as card sorting, using demonstrations, and using simulations) have been used to elicit participant ideas. While surveys can increase participation and remove geographic barriers from studies, they typically lack the ability to obtain detailed, thick description of participant ideas, which are possible from in-person interviews. Minimal research in CER has examined how to harness technology to synthesize traditionally diverse research approaches to advance the field. This paper presents a novel method for interviewing research participants employing freely available technology to investigate student ideas about the purposes of conducting chemistry outreach, how success of an outreach event is evaluated, and student understanding of the chemistry content embedded in activities facilitated at events. As the outreach practitioner population comes from numerous institutions and is therefore geographically diverse, technology is necessary in order to gain access to these students. To elicit their ideas and remove barriers associated with rapport, interview tasks are adapted and implemented electronically. The description of a novel set of methods is coupled with evidence from the interviews to illustrate the trustworthiness of the data obtained and to support the method as a means to improve qualitative data collection in chemistry education research. These methods create a unique data collection environment for off-site investigations and are applicable to all disciplines, as they shed light on how qualitative research in the 21st century can increase the diversity of samples and improve the transferability of findings.

Informal chemistry education/chemistry outreach is ubiquitous with the chemical enterprise. However, little research has focused on the planning, implementation, or evaluation of these events. Results from a previous study suggest that college students involved with collegiate chapters of the American Chemical Society and Alpha Chi Sigma are heavily involved with chemistry outreach, and their most frequently discussed purpose is to teach chemistry content to their audiences. Given this goal, it is timely to investigate how well these college students, who are acting as teachers in outreach environments, understand the chemistry content embedded in the activities they implement during their events. Presented in this paper are the results of a content analysis of semi-structured interviews (N = 37) focused specifically on student understanding of the elephant toothpaste reaction and making liquid nitrogen ice cream at a general chemistry level. Results show prevalent misunderstandings and misconceptions of the content despite the sample being composed primarily of junior and senior chemistry majors. Implications for teaching in both formal and informal environments are presented in light of these findings, as well as potential future investigations of the teaching and learning occurring during chemistry outreach.

A national survey of chemists (n = 174) explored the self-reported format and focus of postsecondary inorganic chemistry instructional laboratory curricula. Multiple instructional laboratory course formats were observed, including stand-alone inorganic chemistry instructional laboratory courses, inorganic chemistry laboratory instruction as a component of a multidisciplinary instructional laboratory course, and the absence of an inorganic chemistry instructional laboratory experience. Additionally, the types of synthetic, characterization, and purification methods, as well as the professional skills addressed in the surveyed courses, varied greatly. The results of this work have direct implications as a “current state of the curriculum” description for inorganic chemistry educators designing and revising instructional laboratory courses. Additionally, these results speak to (1) the need for professional organizations to reinforce the importance of postsecondary inorganic chemistry in the chemistry major curriculum, (2) the demand for quality curricular materials that are easily adaptable to multiple instructional laboratory contexts, and (3) the call for further research on how the inorganic chemistry (and broader chemistry) instructional curriculum is enacted.