Talk:Chemistry education

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 19 January 2021 and 16 April 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Thecreativechemist.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 17:18, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

New lead by User:Hallenrm
I do not think this new lead is appropriate, but the material should be somewhere. The lead should state what chemical education is in summary, so this can be expanded later. Chemical education is not general chemistry. The give-away to me is that the term "chemical education" in bold is not in the first few words of the article. I am puzzled why Hallenrm added it. --Bduke 10:51, 27 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, I agree. It doesn't seem to fit at all. I would fix it but I'm not editing right now, as I don't have my own computer.  Walkerma 18:32, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I will revert it. Chemical education is the study of teaching practice. This new lead is just a description of the teaching of general chemistry and the role of general chemistry in chemistry itself. It fails to understand what the subject is about. --Bduke 22:54, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Rename
The category Category:Chemical education is being proposed at Categories for discussion/Log/2007 December 29 for renaming to Category:Chemistry education. There are suggestions there that this article should be renamed to Chemical education, which currently is a redirect. Certainly the category and the article names should be consistent. What do you think? --Bduke (talk) 00:59, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

The rename proposal did not occur as it was closed at no consensus. We now have the article and the category with different names. I just edited the category to the current one on this article. --Bduke (talk) 22:09, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

A look at Chemistry Education around the World
OK, I am not going to get into a revert war on the inclusion of this material, but I believe in time it will be modified considerably by others. I have started the process of wikifying it and moving to follow the manual of style - see WP:MOS. The inbedded external links, need to be made into references, if indeed that is what they are, or moved to external links. I have added one internal link, but more need to be linked. I have removed the sections with no significant activity, because it is essentially original research and you may not just have found a reference. Also hundreds of departments will fit this category. The major concern is that the material is not encyclopedic and it is likely to be far too long. A summary of chemical education in the US could be just a paragraph if it was based on a good secondary source. As it is, this material is close to or beyond the line of original research, which is not allowed on wikipedia - see WP:NOR.

What do other editors think? --Bduke (talk) 22:09, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Greetings. If I may, I would like to provide a little background, because this might be an unusual (yet useful) process for constructing a wikipedia entry. In December 2007, while planning my seminar course for first-year chemistry graduate students who are interesting in faculty careers (Chem 720, Department of Chemistry, University of Michigan, USA), it occurred to me to see what the wikipedia entry for "Chemistry Education" looked like, to see whether I wanted to include a discussion of this in my course. What I found was basically a placeholder. Inspired, I thought it would be useful and educative for my students to take on the question "What is Chemistry Education?" by, at least in part, compiling the available public resources (such as who does work in Chemistry Education as evidenced by their faculty web sites). In that sense, the entries are quite honest to the sense of 'research' as prescribed by the Wikipedia guidelines. Around the country, and around the world, it is our hope that these entries would be further refined (and elaborated) by other editors. As such entries are obviously dynamic (academic institutions are as constantly changing as a biographical entry), it is also my expectation that each year, at least, my students in this seminar could contribute to editing/updating these entries. -- GaoBoLe 4 February 2008 —Preceding comment was added at 00:56, 5 February 2008 (UTC)


 * It is very welcome that someone is working to expand this neglected yet important article, but I don't believe this is the best way to proceed.  These students should be able to improve this article greatly by applying the whole breadth of their knowledge, learning and resources, rather than by just compiling a directory.  I think this material about US programs can be used, but it should be distilled down to a single paragraph.  It says that the survey is "revealing" - could the authors describe instead the main conclusions that have been revealed (I don't see them!)?  It should be remembered that such programs make up only a small part of the topic, and the US programs make up only a small percentage of programs worldwide.  So I would recommend that the students look into other aspects such as:
 * How are Chem Ed programs handled in other countries?
 * How is Chem Ed handled for educators at the high school level? Grade school?  Ditto, in different parts of the world?  Is the training adequate?  Are there always shortages of qualified teachers?  If so, why?
 * What are some of the main issues relating to labs?
 * Different approaches to labs (cookbook chemistry, discovery-based, other active learning approaches, project based, etc.)? Why are cookbook labs still prevalent?  What are some of the standard problems with active learning approaches when used?)
 * Microscale vs macroscale? "Green chemistry" approaches vs traditional labs?  Issues of safety and regulation in teaching labs?
 * As before - how do these things vary in Japan, Korea, Australia, France, UK, US, Russia, Italy, South Africa, Canada, India, China?
 * What are some of the main issues relating to general teaching & "lecturing"? Online vs traditional courses?  Safety limitations on the traditional classroom demo, does this mean that many students graduate high school having only ever watched chemistry on a video?
 * How is assessment best done? How successful are different programs, different approaches, and different countries?
 * These are just a few thoughts, I'm sure people studying the field in depth could add more to the list, and improve my selection. But my point remains: A talented group such as this should be able to add a lot of useful important content to this article, and learn a lot in the process!  Cheers, Walkerma (talk) 03:47, 5 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I have to agree with Walkerma here. IMO, this whole section needs to be scrapped and maybe rewritten with a different focus for re-inclusion. This article is becoming a coatrack for specific, unrelated paragraphs about all sorts of things related to the topic of Chemistry education and is now drifting into all sorts of things explicitly not related to that topic. A list of top institutions and how they do or don't cover this field, especially written as an analysis of course offerings and website information is WP:OR. What appears to be destined to become a list of research groups with lots of info about their research projects, but only slight mention of how it all is about chemistry education is turning this page further into a directory of research projects instead of an encyclopediac article. I think what we need here is coherent writing about the topic, not disconnected vignettes or non-sourced chunks of analysis. If people or departments or research groups are notable, they should get their own page. DMacks (talk) 20:02, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Individual researchers
I have now reverted twice the inclusion of material by User:Nategrove on Dr. Stacey Lowery Bretz. This material is completely non-encyclopedic as it uses the words "we" and "our" frequently. It is also giving far too much weight to one researcher. If it get added again, I will revert once more. Then someone else will have to take over. --Bduke (talk) 00:59, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

The section below is copied from User talk:Nategrove and is a reply there to my comment which was much like that above. I think the discussion should be here so that everyone will see it. --Bduke (talk) 03:31, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I hate to tell you this, but the listing on chemistry education is woefully out of date and in no way actually reflects the reality of the discipline. The programs listed do not even offer degrees (with the exception of the University of Arizon and the University of Iowa).  Those programs that do, and there are now about two dozen, are not even highlighted.  There is no information about the significant, historical figures in the field, nor who is currently working.  Hence, the reason for our additions (I say "our" because this is a project initiated as part of the Division of Chemical Education of the American Chemical Society's desire to increase the availability of information about our field).  You said that my addition focused too much on one figure, yet, the text as it exists only mentions a few of the two or three dozen significant researchers in the field.  Although there was only one faculty member listed, the plan was to quickly add similar information for the other major figures in the field.  We were waiting for the four day probationary period to end so we could add a photo so the other faculty could see what their entry would look like.  I have always viewed Wikipedia as a living document that could be continually refined and updated as knowledge evolves.  This insistance on maintaining the status quo flies in the face of the original goals of this project.  In any event, we want to be able to provide this important information to people who are interested in learning more about what chemistry education researchers do.  How would you recommend we do this?  Could we add a short section called "Researchers in the Field" to the main chemistry education article and then have a link in that short section to a separate wikipedia page that contains information about the separate faculty and their research programs?--Nategrove (talk) 02:38, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you about the whole section called "A look at Chemistry Education around the World". You will notice it is tagged as "This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims". If you look at Talk:Chemistry education, you will see some discussion about this section. In my opinion, it should be removed. Let me ask you this question - Is there a similar section as that one or a similar section as what you are trying to add, in any of the articles like Organic chemistry, Physical chemistry and so on? The answer of course is that there is not. Wikipedia is simply not the place for the "Division of Chemical Education of the American Chemical Society's desire to increase the availability of information about our field". That is your own web pages. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. This material is just not appropriate. Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view. Your inclusion is not neutral. Indeed you admit that it comes from the subject of the section. That is why it keeps using "we" and "our", which are words that should never be used on wikipedia. Is Dr. Stacey Lowery Bretz notable enough for a separate article on wikipedia? If so, then write it, but from a neutral point of view and not by the subject themselves as that is a conflict of interest. If not, and I think that is likely the case, this article or indeed any article should not contain the detail that you added. Another problem with your section is that if it were allowed it should not be restricted to the USA. Similarly the "A look at Chemistry Education around the World" section should not be restricted to the USA. I know enough about the state of chemical education in Australia to know that just that would be longer than the article already is. I know enough about the discipline in the UK to know that that would be several times longer. This level of detail, even if it were written to satisfy wikipedia policies, is simply not appropriate. I think you need to rethink your project and make more use of the ACS' own web site. If you want to use wikipedia, then spend some time understanding what we mean by notability. Take a look at notabilty. Take a look at WikiProject Universities and Wikipedia talk:Notability (academics). Then ask yourself whether the people concerned and the departments concerned would justify a separate article on them. Then get those articles written. After that there could be some links to them from Chemical education. --Bduke (talk) 03:31, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, I came here to comment on that. I find the "A look at chem. ed. in the world" section to be mildly interesting but it has way too much detail and is beyond the scope of what I expect to see in Wikipedia.  I think wholesale removal or distillation to a single paragraph should be strongly considered. Crystal whacker (talk) 00:16, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

The issue discussed here is not resolved as the recent removal and reinstatement of material on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill illustrates. This is far far too long giving detailed information on four individuals who appear in no way to be notable. One of them just develops the local curriculum. Every department has one or more people doing that. Can you image what this article would be like if every university chemistry department in the world had that amount of detail in this article? I think Crystal whacker above is spot on, but that was nearly a year ago. How are we to proceed? -- Bduke   (Discussion)  20:07, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Merge of General chemistry
General chemistry was redirected here. I reverted the edit, as I think it needs discussion. Please discuss it below. I will comment later when I see some arguments for the merge, but I am inclined to not support the merge. -- Bduke   (Discussion)  06:55, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * General chemistry seems to be a description of a general course in chemistry. Some coordination between the two articles seems to be in order and I don't see much against a merger. --Randykitty (talk) 19:03, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
 * opposed, general chemistry is in the same category as analytical chemistry and spectroscopy, Chemistry education is something else. V8rik (talk) 22:26, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Before giving an opinion here, it might actually be helpful to have a look at the article itself, just click: General chemistry... --Randykitty (talk) 23:16, 6 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Support. The article as it stands seems to describe what I would class as being a facet of Chemistry Education. In my experience, I have never heard the term used before. Aloneinthewild (talk) 21:30, 21 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Oppose. One is an about general concepts of chemistry (learning introductory/overview/major themes), one is about how to teach chemistry to others. DMacks (talk) 23:01, 21 February 2013 (UTC)


 * After nearly a year, there is no consensus to do this merge, so I am inclined to remove the merge tags from the two articles. However, since I stared this thread off by a revert, I will wait for a few days to see if there is any more comment here. More than ever, I think DMacks above has it right. "Chemistry education" is about the whole process of education in the subject of chemistry, while General chemistry is about a specific introductory course often in the first year at universities. They are distinct topics. -- Bduke   (Discussion)  23:08, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

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Expanding article
Hi, I'll be adding new sections to this article and expanding on current information. --Thecreativechemist (talk) 03:15, 3 April 2021 (UTC)