Chemical Education Faculty Members
The Anderson Visualization in Biochemistry Education (VIBE) research group has a strong international flavor due to exciting collaborations with experts in Australia, Sweden, South Africa, Brazil and the USA. Our research mainly addresses the following four focus areas and research questions: 1) Visual Literacy: How does the ability to visualize representations influence the development and assessment of reasoning and understanding in biochemistry? 2) Science Inquiry: What factors limit students’ ability to reason about biochemical investigations? 3) Concept Inventories (CIs): How can visualizations be used to assess core concepts and ways of reasoning in CI questions? and 4) Faculty & Curriculum Development: What factors and strategies promote curriculum change and the implementation of educational research findings? To contact Professor Anderson, please call 765-494-5453 or email ander333@purdue.edu. To visit the Anderson Research Group page, please click here.
Our research is based on the constructivist theory of knowledge (see Bodner, G. M., J. Chem. Ed., 1986, 63, 873-878), which assumes that knowledge is created in the mind of the learner. One of our long-term interests has been problem solving in chemistry. This work has focused on differences between the way successful problem solvers approach novel problems and the way in which problem solving has historically be “taught” to students. Whereas chemical education research (CER) once focused primarily on K-12 students, our research has looked at both undergraduate and graduate students in a variety of domains, from the introductory general chemistry course through the problem-solving behavior of graduate students designing a total synthesis. Recent work has been directed toward facilitating the learning of chemistry at the undergraduate level by students with blindness or low vision. To contact Professor Bodner, please call 765-494-5313 or email gmbodner@purdue.edu. To visit the Bodner Research Group page, please click here. Professor Bodner is no longer accepting students into his research program.
Research in the Towns group integrates across the particulate, macroscopic, and symbolic domains of chemistry. In the macroscopic domain we are investigating the faculty and student perspectives of undergraduate chemistry laboratory, specifically on their goals for laboratory. In the symbolic domain our research in physical chemistry focuses on the ways in which student understanding is fostered in classrooms where discussion takes place using discourse analysis. Finally, in the particulate domain we investigate the student understanding of visual images of molecules, in particular biomolecules which are conceptually rich and the gateway to understanding structure-function relationships. To contact Professor Towns, please call 765-496-1574 or email mtowns@purdue.edu. To visit the Towns Research Group, please click here.
Research in the Weaver Chemical Education group is focused on elucidating the ways in which innovative instructional materials and methods can be used to help students better understand and learn chemistry. One aspect of our work is to examining how instructional technologies can be designed and used in the classroom. In addition to developing, implementing and assessing instructional technologies of a variety of types, our group also looks at the more theoretical aspects of learning chemistry. For example, we have looked at the effects of discourse, group collaborative work, peer instruction and context-situated learning. The overall goal of research in this group is to understand how to improve the teaching and learning process in chemistry, especially as the demographics and learning styles of college students change. To contact Professor Weaver, please call 765-496-3055 or email gweaver@purdue.edu. To visit the Weaver Research Group, please click here.
Past Chemical Education Professors
Mary Nakhleh, Professor Emeritus
Our research group focuses on how students develop their ideas about chemistry using the tools in their environment, such as computers or the Web, as aids in cognition. As students struggle to organize this flow of information, knowledge structures are created that may be explored and described using clinical interviews, think-aloud protocols, and concept mapping techniques. A particular focus of our group is studying students’ understanding of the particle nature of matter across ages and grades by analyzing and interpreting the drawing that students create to explain their understanding. To contact Professor Nakhleh, please email mnakhleh@purdue.edu. Professor Nakhleh has retired from the University and is no longer accepting students
Chemical Education faculty members.
(Front L-R) Trevor Anderson, George Bodner, Marcy Towns. (Back L-R) Mary Nakhleh, Gabriela Weaver