Chemical Education Research Page
John Deming
Assistant Professor
Chemical Education/Environmental Geochemistry
Winona State University
The fundamental premise that drives my chemical education scholarship is that science education scholarship should be theory-driven. It is not, “Look at what I did and my kids liked it,” but rather, “psychological research suggest that this intervention should promote this outcome. Let’s set up an experiment to test this theory.” This research then informs teaching and curricular choices, as well as professional development models. A brief concept map is provided below.
Research Interests:
My research interests focus generally on one of three areas: Student reasoning ability and conceptual understanding, curriculum development and impact (K-16), important interactions between a teacher (or tutor) and a student.
Student reasoning ability and conceptual understanding – Educational research clearly shows that students need scientific thinking skills in order to succeed in both secondary and post-secondary educational settings. In fact, the thinking skills developed in the K-12 setting predetermine a student’s likelihood for success. Research we (and others) have conducted shows that we can enhance a student’s reasoning ability by choosing appropriate inquiry curriculum strategies. Therefore, it is imperative that we maximize each student’s thinking skills potential to give him or her the best chance at success.
Curriculum development and impact (K-16) – As described above, inquiry-teaching environments can have a life-long impact on students. However, teachers must understand how to implement inquiry in their classrooms and must be able to obtain appropriate inquiry materials. Therefore, we follow a research and development model for designing and writing curricula in order to provide teachers with classroom-tested materials. We also work to develop teachers’ understanding of what inquiry is and what it looks like on a day-to-day basis in the classroom. This topic provides opportunities for professional development workshops (K-16), as well as work with practicing teachers.
Important interactions between a teacher (or tutor) and a student one-to-one tutoring provides a student with the most beneficial tutoring environment available. However, this type of teaching environment is obviously not cost-effective. Therefore, this topic works to identify the critical interactions between a tutor and student that result in student conceptual understanding. Once these are identified and proven superior to traditional tutoring approaches, they will systematically be applied to larger and larger groups to determine if we can enhance the learning environment of larger groups of students.
