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Chemistry Education

Chemistry Education as a research topic

Dr Keith S. Taber is interested in supervising graduate students in the area of chemistry education research (CER).

Chemistry education is a specialised area within science education that has in recent years become increasingly recognised as a discrete are of research in its own right. The core foci of CER are teaching and learning in chemistry. A free-to-access article on the nature and scope of CER is available: 'Three levels of chemistry educational research'.

Dr Taber is editor of the leading CER journal: Chemistry Education Research and Practice, which is published by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). He is author of the books Chemical Misconceptions - Prevention, Diagnosis and Cure (2002, two volumes) and editor of Teaching Secondary Chemistry (2012, 2nd ed.). He in a member of the Editorial Boards of the journals Foundations of Chemistry and Khimiya/Chemistry: Bulgarian Journal of Science Education and of the teacher's periodical Education in Chemistry. He is co-author (with Prof. Onno de Jong) of the chapter on chemistry education in the Handbook of Research in Science Education (2007, and Volume 2, 2014). He is the author or co-author of many journal articles and book chapters on aspects of chemistry learning and chemistry education.

Dr Taber has been awarded the RSC's Education Award for 2014. The award is made biennially to someone judged to have made “a major high level contribution to education in the chemical sciences, over a sustained period of time”. Dr Taber was selected for the award “for extensive research that has contributed significantly to the teaching and learning of chemistry concepts”.

Dr Taber will consider supervising graduate students at masters' (MPhil / MEd) or doctoral (PhD / EdD) levels in most areas of chemistry education at school level and beyond. He is particularly interested in projects related to topics such as learning, conceptual change, student thinking and conceptions, constructivist approaches to chemistry teaching, giftedness and creativity. He is also interested in how students relate their learning in chemistry to their learning in other science subjects.