Title: Getting Serious about Useful Chemistry Learning
Abstract:
Research in my group explores how our field can support chemistry learning that is useful in students’ personal and professional lives. This work is grounded in the research-supported premise that students may experience what they learn in class as useful in life if they (tacitly) see similarities between knowing and learning in-class and in-life. Thus, moving toward useful chemistry learning entails aligning ways of constructing and justifying knowledge that are useful in class with ways that are also useful in-life. In this talk I will present three studies that allow us to think together about knowledge and ways of knowing that we allow in chemistry class. First, I will demonstrate that, even in a class that emphasizes mimicking scientific practices, the goals guiding students’ knowledge construction are unlikely to be useful beyond the classroom. Second, I will illustrate the generativity of reflecting on how our assessments communicate our goals for knowing and learning. Finally, I will show how taken-for granted assumptions about chemistry knowledge and knowers constrain conceivable approaches to reform. Surfacing and reconsidering these assumptions will enable us to more expansively imagine what useful chemistry learning might look like.
Bio:
Ryan earned his Ph.D. from Scripps Research under the guidance of Prof. William Roush. While enrolled in graduate school, Ryan was appointed a Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Fellow with the Board on Science Education at the National Academy of Sciences. Post-Ph.D., Ryan spent 3 years as a postdoctoral fellow mentored by Prof. Melanie Cooper. His postdoctoral work focused on supporting student engagement in expert-like epistemic practices.
Ryan and his research group work to understand what would be required for chemistry classes to prepare students for their post-school daily lives. This agenda is multi-faceted and requires attending to how people and communities use chemistry in daily life, considering how (or whether) knowing and learning in-class resembles knowing and learning in-life, and desettling taken-for-granted assumptions about what chemistry learning could and should look like.