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Chemistry Education Research and Practice (CERP) is the journal for teachers, researchers and other practitioners at all levels of chemistry education. It is published free of charge electronically four times a year, thanks to sponsorship by the Royal Society of Chemistry's Education Division. Coverage includes the following:

• Research, and reviews of research, in chemistry education
• Evaluations of effective innovative practice in the teaching of chemistry
• In-depth analyses of issues of direct relevance to chemistry education

The objectives of the journal:

• To provide researchers with the means to publish their work in full in a journal exclusively dedicated to chemistry education
• To offer teachers of chemistry at all levels a place where they can share effective ideas and methods for the teaching and learning of chemistry
• To bridge the gap between the two groups so that researchers will have their results seen by those who could benefit from using them, and practitioners will gain from encountering the ideas and results of those who have made a particular study of the learning process

Guidance on the nature of acceptable contributions can be found in Recognising quality in reports of chemistry education research and practice .

Meet the team

Find out who is on the editorial and advisory boards for the  Chemistry Education Research and Practice (CERP) journal.

David F Treagust ,  Curtin University of Technology, Australia

Scott  Lewis ,  University of South Florida, USA

Deputy editor

Nicole Graulich , Justus-Liebig Universität Gießen, Germany

Associate editors

Jack Barbera , Portland State University, USA

Mageswary Karpudewan , Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM)

James Nyachwaya , North Dakota State University, USA

Editorial board members

Mei-Hung Chiu , National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan

Resa Kelly , San Jose State University, USA

Gwen Lawrie , University of Queensland, Australia

David Read , University of Southampton, UK

Bill Byers , University of Ulster, UK

Melanie Cooper , Michigan State University, USA

Onno de Jong, University of Utrecht, Netherlands Iztok Devetak , University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

Odilla Finlayson , Dublin City University, Ireland

Loretta Jones , University of Northern Colorado, USA

Orla Catherine Kelly , Church of Ireland College of Education, Ireland

Scott Lewis, Editor, University of South Florida, USA

Iwona Maciejowska, Jagiellonian University, Poland Rachel Mamlok-Naaman , The Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel

David McGarvey, Keele University, UK Mansoor Niaz , Universidad de Oriente, Venezuela MaryKay Orgill , University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA George Papageorgiou , Democritus University of Thrace, Greece Ilka Parchmann , University of Kiel, Germany Michael K. Seery , University of Edinburgh, UK

Keith Taber , University of Cambridge, UK Daniel Tan , Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Zoltán Toth , University of Debrecen, Hungary

Georgios Tsaparlis , (Founding Editor), University of Ioannina, Greece

Jan H van Driel , The University of Melbourne, Australia

Mihye Won , Monash University, Australia

Lisa Clatworthy , Managing Editor

Helen Saxton , Editorial Production Manager

Becky Webb , Senior Publishing Editor

Laura Cooper , Publishing Editor

Hannah Dunckley , Publishing Editor

Natalie Ford , Publishing Assistant

Journal specific guidelines

The intended emphasis is on the process of learning, not on the content. Contributions describing alternative ways of presenting chemical information to students (including the description of new demonstrations or laboratory experiments or computer simulations or animations) are unlikely to be considered for publication. All contributions should be written in clear and concise English. Technical language should be kept to the absolute minimum required by accuracy. Authors are urged to pay particular attention to the way references are cited both in the text and in the bibliography.

The journal has three objectives.

First  to provide researchers a means to publish high quality, fully peer reviewed, educational research reports in the special domain of chemistry education. The studies reported should have all features of scholarship in chemistry education, that is they must be:

• original and previously unpublished
• theory based
• supported by empirical data
• of generalisable character.

The last requirement means that the studies should have an interest for and an impact on the global practice of chemistry, and not be simply of a regional character. Contributions must include a review of the research literature relevant to the topic, and state clearly the way(s) the study contributes to our knowledge base. Last but not least, they should conclude with implications for other research and/or the practice of chemistry teaching.

Second   to offer practitioners (teachers of chemistry at all levels) a place where they can share effective ideas and methods for the teaching and learning of chemistry and issues related to these, including assessment.

The emphasis is on effectiveness, the demonstration that the approach described is successful, possibly more so than the alternatives. Contributions are particularly welcome if the subject matter can be applied widely and is concerned with encouraging active, independent or cooperative learning.

Of special interest are methods that increase student motivation for learning, and those that help them to become effective exploiters of their chemical knowledge and understanding. It is highly desirable that such contributions should be demonstrably based, wherever possible, on established educational theory and results.

Third  to help to bridge the gap between educational researchers and practitioners by providing a single platform where both groups can publish high-quality papers with the realistic hope that researchers will find their results seen by those who could benefit from using them.

Also, practitioners will gain from encountering the ideas and results of those who have made a particular study of the learning process in finding better ways to improve their teaching and the learning experience of their students.  

Articles should be submitted using ScholarOne , the Royal Society of Chemistry's article review and submission system. A printed copy of the manuscript will not be required. Your submission will be acknowledged as soon as possible. 

Exceptions to normal Royal Society of Chemistry policy

Submissions to Chemistry Education Research and Practice do not require a table of contents entry. Submissions to the journal should use Harvard referencing.

Citations in the text should therefore be made by use of the surname of the author(s) and the year of the publication, at the appropriate place. Note that with one or two authors the name(s) are given, while if the source has three or more authors, it is cited with the first named author as 'Author et al. '

When more than one source is cited in the text, they should be listed in chronological and then alphabetical order for example, '(Jones, 2001; Smith, 2001; Adams, 2006)'. The references themselves are given at the end of the final printed text, in alphabetical and, if the same author is cited more than once, chronological order. An example of a journal article reference as it would be presented is Taber K. S., (2015), Advancing chemistry education as a field, Chem. Educ. Res. Pract. , 16 (1), 6–8.

Article types

Chemistry Education Research and Practice  publishes:

Perspectives

Review articles.

Perspectives are short readable articles covering current areas of interest. They may take the form of personal accounts of research or a critical analysis of activity in a specialist area. By their nature, they will not be comprehensive reviews of a field of chemistry. Since the readership of Chemistry Education Research and Practice is wide-ranging, the article should be easily comprehensible to a non-specialist in the field, whilst at the same time providing an authoritative discussion of the area concerned.

We welcome submissions of Perspective articles that:

• Communicate new challenges or visions for teaching chemistry framed in current chemistry education research or theories with evidence to support claims.
• Propose frameworks (theoretical, conceptual, curricular), models, pedagogies or practices informed by personal expertise and supported by research outcomes (either the author’s own research or the wider body of education research).
• Argue theoretical stances accompanied by recommendations for how these can be applied in teaching practice or measured in student conceptualisation of knowledge, with examples.

For more information on Perspective articles please see our 2022 Editorial (DOI: 10.1039/D2RP90006H )

These are normally invited by the Editorial Board and editorial office, although suggestions from readers for topics and authors of reviews are welcome.

Reviews must be high-quality, authoritative, state-of-the-art accounts of the selected research field. They should be timely and add to the existing literature, rather than duplicate existing articles, and should be of general interest to the journal's wide readership.

All Reviews and Perspectives undergo rigorous peer review, in the same way as regular research papers.

Review articles published in Chemistry Education Research and Practice include narrative, integrative or systematic reviews and meta-analyses and should align with the goals and scope of the journal.

Thought experiments outlining a theoretical position or personal opinion without including a literature basis, pedagogical recommendations or evidence of implementation are not considered in the journal.

For more information on preparing a review-style article please see our 2021 Editorial (DOI: 10.1039/D1RP90006D )

Full papers contain original scientific work that has not been published previously.

Comments and Replies are a medium for the discussion and exchange of scientific opinions between authors and readers concerning material published in Chemistry Education Research and Practice. 

For publication, a Comment should present an alternative analysis of and/or new insight into the previously published material. Any Reply should further the discussion presented in the original article and the Comment. Comments and Replies that contain any form of personal attack are not suitable for publication. 

Comments that are acceptable for publication will be forwarded to the authors of the work being discussed, and these authors will be given the opportunity to submit a Reply. The Comment and Reply will both be subject to rigorous peer review in consultation with the journal’s Editorial Board where appropriate. The Comment and Reply will be published together.

Readership information

Chemical education researchers and teachers of chemistry in universities and schools

Subscription information

Chemistry Education Research and Practice is free to access thanks to sponsorship by the Royal Society of Chemistry's Education Division

Online only : ISSN 1756-1108

*2022 Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate Analytics, 2023)

**The median time from submission to first decision including manuscripts rejected without peer review from the previous calendar year

***The median time from submission to first decision for peer-reviewed manuscripts from the previous calendar year

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• In the Classroom
• Published: 17 February 2021

Adapting educational experiences for the chemists of tomorrow

• Mik Fanguy 1 ,
• Sang Yup Lee   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0599-3091 2 &
• David G. Churchill 3  

Nature Reviews Chemistry volume  5 ,  pages 141–142 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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Technical universities are constantly experimenting with innovative student-centred classroom approaches. We describe flipped and linked classroom approaches in the context of our ongoing chemical education theme of catalysis.

The calling to teach the next generation of chemists in East Asia has led us and others to search for new modes of learning that can inspire creativity and self-reliance. Fresh experiences in learning arise from experiments in teaching. If we are not careful, from a student’s perspective, the result might be trials and tribulations. Creativity in (chemistry) education comes down to different approaches. These forays, some linguistic in nature, could be anything from broad campus-wide initiatives to grassroots efforts. Grand initiatives require heavy cooperation, ‘branding’ and looking to the future — in brief, they require campus management. At technical universities, where developments in science and technology are often prioritized over new educational paradigms, individual professors and educational professionals alike seek to test their ability to create the classroom of the future.

A case study in flipped classroom learning

Regarding campus-wide efforts, about 10 years ago, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) launched an educational platform called Education 3.0. In this flipped format of learning 1 , students watch pre-recorded online videos at home and then attend weekly face-to-face meetings. Here, they convene at round tables, prepare and deliver presentations, and participate in team-based discussion and learning on themes prescribed by a professor as per the syllabus. Under ‘3.0’, learners performed projects, tasks and experiments together in a more embracing and interactive mode than was typically possible in traditional large lecture halls, exemplifying a marked difference from the then status quo. Unsurprisingly, because of this substantial change in classroom style, both professors and students at first found frustration. Amidst the faculty lunch dialogue, a pervasive joke emerged: “you can lecture any way you want, except by lecturing”.

In response to these frustrations, a new ‘one-stop shopping’ approach was implemented across the campus, offering a tremendous array of alternatives deviating from the heavy reliance on video instruction of a flipped format course. Instead, fresh course plans were devoid of lectures and full of student interaction and collaboration through semester-long project-based and/or problem-based learning (Education 4.0). This widespread experience of online and blended instruction across the curriculum also facilitated remote learning, allowing the quality of KAIST instruction to be largely unaffected by the COVID-19 pandemic 2 .

Chemistry education

Amidst campus-wide initiatives, relying on great numbers of faculty marching to a proposed administrative drumbeat, there are subtler grassroots efforts to develop education methods that are sometimes esoteric but often more specific to a certain field of study.

A substantial amount of the coursework at any technical university involves chemistry in one form or another, such that it lives up to its place as the ‘central science’. In addition, because professors have to get the point across, every such instructor, student and teaching assistant alike is faced with issues relevant to chemistry education whether they know it or not. Faculty members have been active in publishing articles covering topics from aspects of laboratory environment 3 , chemical safety and general chemistry 4 , as well as inter-language resources to help bring about new modes of learning 5 , 6 .

New dimensions of chemistry education and related training are being tested all the time. For example, the need to produce clear and compelling prose is important in securing research funding and getting papers accepted. To this end, we have been running a publishing club through which professors can share insights and tricks of the trade with students when submitting and responding to reviewer feedback. In addition, manuscript writing and presentation courses were invigorated by taking into account that linguistic challenges are coupled with scientific ones. The English as a Foreign Language Department at KAIST now provides discipline-specific Scientific Writing and Scientific Presentation courses for graduate students to afford them deep insights into the features that distinguish the dissemination of chemistry from that of other subjects.

Catalysis as an example

Research in scientific education and pedagogy allows us to explore how technology can enhance the classroom and how we abstract and visualize chemical concepts. As an example, an international project aims to put a spin on how we teach catalysis and create iconography for catalysts and the field of catalysis. One way to understand catalysis is to understand what ruins an otherwise happily working catalyst. Poisons and inhibitors can begin to shut down catalytic cycles that normally occur smoothly, whether it be in a catalytic converter, an enzyme in our body or an n th generation catalyst for industry. New ways to represent catalysts can be deeply explored from a hybrid education–science perspective.

technology can enhance the classroom and how we abstract and visualize chemical concepts

Faculty members who teach science and engineering courses and those who teach communications courses can collaborate, often in globalized ways, to leverage technology-enhanced learning to increase instructional depth and discipline specificity in the instruction of scientific communication. Catalysis coverage can be deep yet tailored. Information and communication technologies can afford students access to a greater array of learning content to suit their individual needs, particularly with regard to the instruction of scientific communication. At KAIST, as in many global universities, students have varying levels of experience and skill with their research, with visual and verbal communication in their field, and with the English language in general. The ongoing research described here aims to teach the concept of inhibitors in an overlapping manner between content classes and communications classes; these can be linked by prior cooperation of instructors working in different departments. We hope that our approach will enable students to achieve an enriched understanding of inhibitors and their effects on chemical reactions, as students aim to express, both textually and visually in communication classes, these concepts to be understood by their peers first and a wider audience second.

Developing a new set of icons for catalysis is a long-term project. With computer-generated graphical chemistry representations and creative journal cover artwork appearing daily, as well as new representations of ligands, students can start by first identifying which previous artwork and pictorial renditions they find clearest and most helpful in conveying the necessary message.

2021 and beyond

Ultimately, we are trying to optimize the educational experience in the era following COVID-19. More than ever, students are involved in student-centred hybrid learning. To alleviate students going vacuously from classroom to classroom, brilliant educational ideas coupled with course content can help retain long-term knowledge for one’s life and scientific or business career. Beauty is often in the eye of the beholder in empowering student and professor initiatives alike.

Casselman, M. D. et al. Dissecting the flipped classroom: using a randomized controlled trial experiment to determine when student learning occurs. J. Chem. Educ. 97 , 27–35 (2020).

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Lee, K., Fanguy, M., Lu, X. S. & Bligh, B. Student learning during COVID-19: it was not as bad as we feared. Dist. Educ. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2020.1869529 (2021).

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Kim, T. T., Kim, H. & Han, S. Academic research inspired design of an expository organic chemistry lab course. J. Kor. Chem. Soc. 62 , 99–105 (2018).

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Churchill, D. G. Chemical structure and accidental explosion risk in the research laboratory. J. Chem. Educ. 83 , 1798–1803 (2006).

Churchill, D. G. Word reduction editing in second-language scientific writing by east Asian and South Asian chemistry graduate students. J. Chem. Educ. 83 , 1022–1023 (2006).

Chang, J. & Churchill, D. Bringing out the “main characters” in general chemistry: can creating a sense of narrative in the classroom and for the textbook aid long-term memory? J. Chem. Educ. 88 , 408–414 (2011).

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Acknowledgements

M.F., S.Y.L. and D.G.C. acknowledge KAIST for research support and their undergraduate and graduate students for inspiration.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

English as a Foreign Language Department, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, Republic of Korea

Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, Republic of Korea

Sang Yup Lee

Department of Chemistry, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, Republic of Korea

David G. Churchill

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Fanguy, M., Lee, S.Y. & Churchill, D.G. Adapting educational experiences for the chemists of tomorrow. Nat Rev Chem 5 , 141–142 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41570-021-00258-5

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Research in Chemistry Education

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• Liliana Mammino 0 ,
• Jan Apotheker 1

School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences, University of Venda, Thohoyandou, South Africa

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• Explores the teaching and learning of chemistry across the African continent
• Presents the best papers from the Second African Conference on Research in Chemistry Education
• Provides examples of classroom activities and teaching strategies in chemistry education

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This volume emphasizes the role of chemical education for development and, in particular, for sustainable development in Africa, by sharing experiences among specialists across the African continent and with specialists from other continents. It considers all areas and levels of chemistry education, gives specific attention to known major challenges and encourages explorations of novel approaches.

The chapters in this book describe new teaching approaches, approach-explorations and in-class activities, analyse educational challenges and possible ways of addressing them and explore cross-discipline possibilities and their potential benefits for chemistry education.

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Jan Apotheker retired in December 2016 as lecturer in science education at the University of Groningen, where he was involved in training both secondary school teachers as well as the faculty staff. Between 2014 an 2016 he coordinated the FP-7 project’Irresistible’. in which State of the art science research was introduced in the science classroom. He is chair of the Committee on Chemistry Education of IUPAC, and chief editor of ‘Chemistry Teacher International’.

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Book Title : Research in Chemistry Education

Editors : Liliana Mammino, Jan Apotheker

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59882-2

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Hardcover ISBN : 978-3-030-59881-5 Published: 18 May 2021

Softcover ISBN : 978-3-030-59884-6 Published: 19 May 2022

eBook ISBN : 978-3-030-59882-2 Published: 17 May 2021

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Number of Pages : XVI, 189

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Topics : Science Education , Learning & Instruction , Teaching and Teacher Education

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Progressing chemistry education research as a disciplinary field

• Keith S. Taber   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1798-331X 1  

Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research volume  1 , Article number:  5 ( 2019 ) Cite this article

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This article offers a viewpoint regarding the current status of chemistry education research (CER) as a scholarly field within science education, and suggests priorities for future directions of work in the field. The article begins by briefly considering what makes something a discrete field of activity, and what makes such a field ‘scientific’. This provides a basis for understanding and evaluating CER, and informs a consideration of imperatives and priorities for progressing the field. In particular, it is suggested one emphasis should be on areas of work which can be considered ‘inherent’ to CER as they arise from essential aspects of chemistry teaching and learning, and some examples of such inherent research foci (the ‘chemist’s triplet’; models in chemistry; chemical explanations) are briefly discussed.

Introduction: CER as a field

This article discusses chemistry education research (CER) as a field, and considers both why it is reasonable to consider CER as a discrete field (rather than just a domain within science education research) and how this has implications for both what is considered to count as CER – such that not all educational research carried out in chemistry teaching and learning contexts (CTLC) should be considered inherently CER – and for setting priorities in the field. It is argued that a productive scientific field encompasses progressive research programmes (RP), and some suggestions are made for timely RP.

There is a range of indicators that can be used to consider the extent to which an area of activity can be considered a scholarly field (Fensham, 2004 ), and based on these indicators CER is now well-established as field in its own right. CER has its own international journals (in particular, Chemistry Education Research and Practice and the Journal of Chemical Education ) and regular conference series; there has been a stream of scholarly books on the subject from major publishers, and there is now a specialised book series ( Advances in Chemistry Education , published by the Royal Society of Chemistry). There are academics with chairs in the subject, who lead research groups focused on chemistry education, and offer specialist doctoral training.

A field needs to be focused on some sphere of activity or phenomena, and in the case of CER this is the practice of chemistry education. As an area of practice, chemistry education might be generally equated to teaching the curriculum subject ‘chemistry’. The core phenomena of interest in educational research are teaching and learning (Pring, 2000 ), and so logically the primary foci of CER are the teaching and learning of chemistry. The wider scope of CER encompasses areas of enquiry linked to these foci. This would include such matters as the chemistry curriculum (what is set out to be taught and learnt; how disciplinary chemical knowledge is represented in the curriculum); how learning of chemistry is assessed; the discipline-specific aspects of how teachers are prepared for and developed in their work; the design of teaching resources (such as textbooks and digital tools) that represent chemical knowledge in ways informed by knowledge of human learning processes or to support particular pedagogies.

Teaching is activity that is intended to bring about some specific learning. The notion of (specifically) chemistry teaching therefore has most traction in a context where there is a formal curriculum having ‘strong classification’, that is where the curriculum is divided into clearly distinguished subjects with identifiable areas of content (Sadovnik, 1991 ). This is worth noting, both because there has historically been debate on the place of discrete sciences, versus integrated or coordinated science in the curriculum at school level (Jenkins, 2007 ), and because in recent years the notion of ‘STEM’ (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) has shifted from being mainly seen as a label for a grouping of (discrete but) related disciplines, to a recognised curriculum area, and potentially indeed a curriculum subject, in the school curriculum (Chesky & Wolfmeyer, 2015 ). That is, in some national contexts STEM remains largely a construct offering a convenient branding for a strategic alliance of those wishing to raise funding support for, and public awareness of the importance of, the sciences and related areas. Yet, in other contexts the traditional boundaries between the natural sciences, and between pure and applied science, are being fundamentally questioned both in terms of science practice and science education.

In such a context, CER may not be understood as purely focused on teaching and learning in classes formally labelled chemistry, as the teaching and learning of chemical topics (e.g., acids), and specific concepts (e.g., oxidation) can occur in the context of ‘science’ lessons - or indeed STEM classes, or even within the context of curriculum offerings based around interdisciplinary projects that do not explicitly acknowledge traditional subjects (Rennie, Venville, & Wallace, 2012 ), or less formal making and tinkering activities where STEM knowledge might be developed on a just-in-time basis (Bevan, Gutwill, Petrich, & Wilkinson, 2015 ). Yet this raises the question: why consider teaching these topics in such contexts as chemistry teaching (and so within the remit of CER) rather than science teaching or STEM teaching, or just teaching.

There is also a criticism that the science taught in formal education systems is often learned as a set of discrete topics, whereas one core metaphysical commitment of science is to seek overarching ideas and superordinate concepts that can subsume previously discrete notions (Taber, 2006 ). This raises the question of whether compartmentalisation of the curriculum is a barrier to students linking up their learning (Taber, 2018a ) both within and across subject divides.

Such considerations raise an existential challenge to CER as a field. There is a very well established field of science education (Fensham, 2004 ), so it might be asked whether CER is any more than just a term covering those studies falling within science education research (SER) where the material being taught happens to be chemical. Unless there is a case to be made in response to such a challenge, CER might be seen to be simply one convenient administrative category when considering studies carried out within SER, rather than something with its own character.

Indeed, there is a strong argument to be made that the recognition of CER, and PER (physics education research), etcetera, as discrete fields owes much to the work done in higher education by researchers from within university science departments and faculties. In that context CER seems a natural category for those employed by chemistry departments - and having little opportunity to come into direct contact with teaching and learning beyond that context. That rationale offers little to those primarily concerned with teaching of school chemistry.

CER as a compound of its elements, not a mixture

Another argument that has been made is that much research that takes place in chemistry teaching and learning contexts (CTLC) is addressing general educational questions, where the choice of the particular study context may be little more than a matter of convenience, or reflect the professional concerns of practitioners enquiring into their practice to see if they can fruitfully apply recommended innovations in their own teaching. That is, although the work is carried out in a chemistry classroom or some other CTLC, that offers little more than a backdrop to an examination of some general educational focus: for example, about how best to organise a mixed-ability class into productive working groups. These are questions where the findings from one classroom may not automatically generalise to other classrooms, but where the CTLC is only one potentially relevant variable among many (age of students; gender; diversity of school population in terms of socio-economic status; proportion of students accessing the learning in a second or additional language; etc.)

This type of study has been labelled as ‘collateral’ CER (Taber, 2013b ). By contrast, ‘embedded’ CER (Taber, 2013b ) goes beyond this by carefully linking particular aspects of the specific subject matter being taught to the general educational issue - for example, not just how to implement a flipped learning approach in this class (which happens to be a first year undergraduate chemistry course), but how to best profit from the affordances of flipped learning when introducing the topic of transition metal complexes (or the Nernst equation, or whatever) given the particular challenges in teaching and learning that material.

An inherent assumption here is that the outcomes of the research are in a substantive sense dependent on teaching that is informed by the specialist knowledge about teaching and learning of specific material that a subject specialist teacher brings to the classroom: that is, the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) (Kind, 2009 ) that evolves as a kind of meta-knowledge formed from a hybridisation of subject knowledge and general pedagogic knowledge, and developed through testing out in classroom practice (Taber, 2018b ). PCK is not just a mixture or assemblage of subject and pedagogic knowledge, but something new, formed by ‘reacting’ these through planning, teaching, and evaluating classes.

An interesting thought experiment to distinguish embedded CER from collateral CER might be to consider a CER research report where every mention of chemistry, particular chemical topics, specific chemical concepts, etcetera, has been redacted; and then to ask the question whether the (now non-disciplinary-specific) conclusions of the study can still be considered robust. If we judged the study offered convincing implications independent of the disciplinary context (which is no longer available to a reader seeking to evaluate the redacted manuscript), then these have not been bound to the specific challenges of teaching the subject matter. Such research could be considered metaphorically a mixture of educational research and chemistry, as these components can be separated out, rather than a compound that has its own characteristic CER properties.

Of course, embedded CER might not be so different in kind than embedded PER or other educational research where the specifics of the curriculum context are intrinsic to the research. There may be differences in detail in how teachers can, for example, usefully apply Bloom’s taxonomy to planning different lessons (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001 ), but perhaps (and this may be considered an empirical question) those differences in detail are no greater when (a) comparing the teaching of homologous series with the teaching of electromagnetic induction, or with the teaching about the causes of the industrial revolution; than when (b) comparing the teaching of homologous series with teaching about Lewis acid theory, or with teaching about electronegativity. If that were so, then CER still seems little more than a bureaucratic label, albeit for (i) findings that are contingent on the peculiarities of specific disciplinary content (where that content falls within the discipline of chemistry), rather than (ii) findings presented as widely generalisable to different teaching contexts, which just happen to derive from a CTLC.

• Inherent disciplinary educational research

Yet, it is also the case that a discipline such as chemistry does present its own particular challenges that are somewhat distinct from those found in other disciplines, and which are also widely relevant when teaching and learning beyond a single teaching topic and across the discipline. I will here suggest two such ‘essential’ foci for ‘inherent’ CER (Taber, 2013b ) that explores issues intrinsic to the teaching of the discipline.

Johnstone ( 1982 ) mooted the idea that chemistry teaching was especially challenging because it asked students to think - often at the same time - about the macroscopic (bench-scale) phenomenon, the molecular level structure of matter, and the specialised forms of representation used in chemistry. The so-called chemist’s triplet has become a particular core concern in chemistry education where it has been recognised as critically important in teaching and learning the subject, and so has become a key focus of research and scholarship (Taber, 2013a ; Talanquer, 2011 ). This issue is important across the teaching of many topics within chemistry, but does not apply directly in other disciplines. Johnstone suggested biology and physics faced similar, although not identical, issues, but his arguments have not been seen as so centrally important in teaching those subjects. In particular, the ubiquitous use of the ‘chemical language’ of formulae and equations to bridge between the molar and molecular levels in explaining chemical phenomena is characteristic of much chemistry teaching (Taber, 2009 ).

Another issue that is especially important in chemistry relates to the nature of models met in learning the subject. Again, this seems to be an especially pertinent issue for chemistry education, where an understanding of the nature of models and modelling (both those used in chemistry itself, and the various teaching models employed to introduce abstract chemical ideas) is essential to make sense of the concepts of the subject and make good progress in learning (Taber, 2010 ). Models of atomic and molecular structure, mathematical models, notions of ideal gases, typologies (such as metal and non-metal, types of bonding), metaphorical language (sharing electrons, electrophilic attack, etc.) and historically shifting concepts (oxidation, acid, etc.), and so forth, are ubiquitous, and much of this conceptual apparatus has become second nature for the teacher - for whom, subjectively, a double bond has likely become as real an object as a conical flask. Supporting students to develop the epistemological sophistication to make sense of the concepts of chemistry, and to keep in mind the ontological status of the ‘objects’ they meet in their studies (e.g., dative bonds, electron deficient compounds, anti-aromaticity, transition states, hybridised atomic orbitals …) is a key challenge for the CER community (Taber, 2019a ). Models and modelling in science and teaching is certainly an important theme across SER (Gilbert, 2004 ), but has proved especially vexing in chemistry teaching, and would seem a clear imperative for research in CER.

CER as a scientific research field

There are many recognised academic fields across the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities and arts. Education as an academic subject is something of a scavenger - founded on other subjects (usually considered to include philosophy, history, psychology and sociology, and these days increasingly economics), intimately tied with the wide range of disciplines that are found in curriculum (such as, inter alia, chemistry), and regularly borrowing ideas and perspectives widely from other areas of the academy. Educational research is often considered essentially social science, but the diversity of research and scholarship carried out in some education faculties spans a full range from pure experiments to literary criticism.

Chemistry education is clearly not a natural science as it focuses on social, not natural, phenomena, but scholars working in CER generally consider they are seeking to be scientific in their work. In natural sciences, such as chemistry, research traditions develop where researchers are inducted into the norms of the research field, and mature traditions of work can be characterised by a disciplinary matrix (Kuhn, 1970 , 1974/1977 ) that can include ontological commitments (e.g., matter is comprised of sub-microscopic quanticles) and epistemological and methodological standards (such the forms of laboratory technique and analysis considered suitable in a line of work) as well as conventions relating to how arguments should be presented, use of technical vocabulary and specialised forms of representation, and such matters as which journals and conferences are appropriate targets for research outputs.

Compared with chemistry, CER admits a wide range of theoretical perspectives (deriving from the learning sciences, sociology, etc.) and methodological approaches. That could be considered a sign of a lack of maturity in the field, but could also, alternatively, reflect the complexity, and context-dependence, of the core phenomena of teaching and learning (Taber, 2014 ). There are guidelines on what makes educational research scientific (National Research Council Committee on Scientific Principles for Educational Research, 2002 ) which acknowledge the diversity of approaches possible, subject to meeting quality criteria in terms of research design and execution.

One helpful idea from history and philosophy of science is the observation that research in natural science disciplines such as chemistry becomes organised into research programmes (RP) that have inherent and explicit core commitments (to what is to be taken for granted; to what classes of research questions are to be addressed) shared by researchers working in that tradition, and which provide sufficient commonality to allow work from different scholars and research groups to iteratively build up a better understanding (Lakatos, 1970 ). These RP are not exclusive, in the sense that alternative parallel programmes taking different approaches to explore the same phenomena are possible, but the agreement on ‘hard core’ assumptions and research purposes allows those working within a particular RP to evaluate whether it remains a ‘progressive’ programme.

A progressive RP is one where empirical and theoretical work are feeding into each other to develop better understandings (as opposed to, for example, where theory is simply being adjusted after the fact to ‘save the phenomena’ as empirical tests fail to demonstrate predicted outcomes). Within this model, the scientist may sometimes ‘quarantine’ anomalous results (Lakatos, 1970 ), that is, acknowledge they challenge current theory, but choose to put this aside as a problem to be addressed later - something a strictly falsificationalist model (Popper, 1989 ) would not allow - against a global judgement that the programme is, on balance , making progress.

Striking a balance in structuring CER as a field

The historian of science Thomas Kuhn ( 1959/1977 ) referred to the ‘essential tension’ in science between (a) the priority of the established research traditions (a priority often reflected in academic appointments and promotions and, in particular, awards of research grants), which require scientists to be disciplined in following lines of work that have previously been found fruitful, and (b) the importance of the creative insight which, recognising which anomalies are potentially significant, enables a completely new conceptualisation that might revolutionise a field. Hegemony can be an impediment to progress in science (Josephson, 1992 ), just as elsewhere, but even if the creative research scientist adopts something of the mentality of bricolage, seeking to find what works in relation to a new problem (Feyerabend, 1975/1988 ; Kincheloe, 2005 ), scientific fields are largely characterised by structured research programmes.

The present author’s experience of having edited a research journal dedicated to CER for over 7 years suggests that anyone reviewing CER today would find considerable diversity in (a) the specific foci of research, (b) theoretical perspectives used to conceptualise that research, and (c) methodological strategies and tactics adopted (e.g., Teo, Goh, & Yeo, 2014 ). It is clearly important that CER remains open to new ideas, new insights, new directions of research (Sevian, 2017 ), but there is also a case to be made for adopting a more programmatic approach that allows studies to share sufficient groundwork to build iteratively on each other (Taber, 2017 ).

Recommendations for the field

The danger I have sought to highlight in this article, is that CER may largely be (or become) a label for education research studies that are either only addressing general questions and happen to be undertaken in CTLC, or embedded studies that address specifics of teaching and learning particular chemistry content, but which are tied to teaching that topic, at that academic level, with limited scope for generalisation beyond the specific context.

Two recommendations that follow from the analysis are offered here. The first is to encourage work that is ‘inherent’ CER because it addresses issues especially, indeed essentially, important across teaching chemistry. The second relates to identifying the programmes of work that link to the major challenges that arise in teaching and learning chemistry.

Identifying inherent CER

I have already mentioned two examples reflecting major challenges faced by practitioners: the so-called ‘chemist’s triplet’ and the ubiquity of models in teaching and learning chemistry. I briefly revisit these, and suggest another related focus for research attention (chemical explanations).

Applying the chemist’s triplet

One important RP concerns understanding how the core CER notion of the chemist’s triplet can be used to better conceptualise learning difficulties and plan curriculum and teaching. Johnstone ( 1982 ) highlighted how the triplet put a burden on students, but the nature of chemistry suggests that authentic chemistry education needs to often simultaneously employ the three aspects of the triplet. There is a good deal of groundwork in this area (Gilbert & Treagust, 2009 ), but it is questionable whether this has yet fed widely into informing classroom practice.

Johnstone’s initial characterisation of three levels has the elegance of a simple formulation that teachers can readily appreciate and relate to. Most commonly, the triplet is understood in terms of Johnstone’s ( 1982 ) original macroscopic and submicrosopic (as well as the symbolic representational) levels, but Talanquer ( 2011 , p. 180) emphasises the contrast between the ‘descriptive and functional’ level “at which phenomena are experienced, observed and described” and the ‘explanatory’ level “at which phenomena are explained”. A slightly different reconceptualisation sees the phenomena observed (and often perceived by learners in relation to everyday ideas, e.g., burning, disappearing) to be re-described both at the macroscopic level in terms of technical chemical concepts and categories (e.g., combustion: reaction with oxygen, dissolving), and then in terms of the explanatory models of the structure of matter at the submicroscopic / nanoscale (Taber, 2013a ). In this version, the symbolic is not seen as a discrete level, but as representing, and sometimes bridging explanations across, the two levels of chemical description. As these brief accounts suggest, there are different ways the ‘levels’ – and how they link to models, theories, and explanations - can be understood. There is clearly scope for more enquiry into how these ideas can best support chemistry teaching.

Making sense of models and representations

The second issue concerns the high frequency of models and related devices (e.g., metaphors) met in learning chemistry. Again, an authentic chemistry education (that reflects the disciplinary practices of the subject) cannot proceed by excluding these, so work is needed to support learners in developing more ‘epistemological nous’ (for example, not seeing atomic models as realistic) and applying metacognition to critically examine their learning (e.g., asking critically what does ‘sharing’ electrons mean?) Perhaps, teachers might initially question the wisdom here, but we would recognise progress when students come to regularly respond to teaching by asking difficult questions such as (i) how can the particles be touching in a solid when the spaces between them change with heating or cooling; (ii) why do the protons in a nucleus not repel each other so much that the nucleus disintegrates; (iii) in what sense, exactly, is a methane molecule a tetrahedron (Taber, 2019a )?

Explanation

Another potential focus for productive research is the theme of explanations, and this might be an area that could be linked to the developing focus on learning progressions in chemistry (Sevian & Talanquer, 2014 ). Explanation is core to chemistry (and often links to the triplet, and to the various models used in the subject).

In recent years there has been considerable focus on the process of scientific argumentation and how this can be modelled in teaching (Erduran, Simon, & Osborne, 2004 ; Newton, Driver, & Osborne, 1999 ). However the related, and equally core, notion of explanation has had much less attention, with very little work looking at the nature of students’ explanations (Taber & Watts, 2000 ) or how students can critique or construct explanations (Taber, 2007 ). This would seem to be an important area where there is much potential for useful research. Ideally this might be the focus of learning progression research (Alonzo & Gotwals, 2012 ), to first explore typical levels of student competencies at different grades, and then to inform curriculum design and teaching that can support progression.

Responding to key challenges in chemistry education

There are many other potential areas of work in CER that can increase our understanding and so better support teaching. Probably the two biggest challenges to chemistry education, especially where chemistry is not an elective subject but one all students are expected to study, relate to relevance and difficulty.

Making chemistry relevant to all

Chemistry is obviously (to a chemist) relevant to everything around us in the material world, but, as a science, chemistry is concerned with substances and their properties and interactions - and that is already an abstraction when very few of the materials young people come into contact with in everyday life are pure substances. There is a challenge therefore to make chemistry relevant (Eilks & Hofstein, 2015 ). One response might be not to teach chemistry as such in the lower grades (e.g., up to age 12 or 13?), but rather a form of material science that would be more context-based (Bennett, Hogarth, & Lubben, 2003 ) and enquiry-based (Schwab, 1962 ) - possibly linked to environmental and socio-scientific issues (Zeidler, 2014 ) - and which would provide both practical experience and background knowledge to be used as the foundations of a formal study of chemistry in later grades.

Another suggestion (perhaps once students progress to those later grades) is to use practical work as a means of introducing phenomena to be explored and explained, and so to provide epistemic relevance to the concepts of chemistry (Taber, 2015 ), given that more traditional approaches teach scientific concepts that are in effect answers to historical questions that most students have never had reason to ask. This might be a less efficient (i.e., slower) approach to teaching canonical concepts, but may be a more authentic reflection of chemistry as science, and a way of engaging students’ imaginations to develop rich conceptualisations that may ultimately offer better foundations for learning canonical models and theories.

• Scaffolding learning

That chemistry is a highly theoretical subject, as well as a laboratory subject, makes the introduction of a good deal of abstract material that many students find challenging, unavoidable. There is already a great deal of work exploring aspects of learners’ difficulties in understanding chemical concepts, and in particular their alternative conceptions and frameworks in the subject (Kind, 2004 ), and why these conceptions occur (Taber, 2002 , 2019a ). There is also work on supporting teachers by providing classroom diagnostic tools to identify student thinking (Treagust, 2006 ). Yet there is more to do, especially in supporting teachers to adopt research-informed teaching within existing curriculum and institutional constraints.

One notion that has been adopted in school teaching is that of ‘scaffolding’ as a strategy for supporting learners to master challenging ideas or skills. In practice, however, this sometimes amounts to little more than applying such common pedagogic tactics as breaking complex material down, offering students support in the form of hand-outs and hints, or expecting group-work to provide sufficient peer support. The idea of scaffolding, however, derives from a particular perspective based on the works of Vygotsky ( 1978 ), that offers potential for providing more customised, individualised, support for students given sufficient information about their particular characteristic as learners (Taber, 2018c ). In principle, then, scaffolding could be a very powerful strategy, but needs to be applied in relation to both the particular learners and subject matter. Research to explore how viable the approach is when used by busy teachers with large classes could be very valuable, but also challenging to carry out.

Conclusions

Space here does not allow the development or augmentation of these examples, but hopefully they sufficiently make the point: for CER to progress as a field (i) it needs to take as strong foci the particular issues of teaching and learning chemistry , that is, those issues that are specific, or especially pronounced, or at least need to be understood within particular contexts, in the practice of chemistry teaching; and (ii) there needs to be a programmatic flavour to much of the work undertaken - to enable ready communication between researchers; to facilitate studies to clearly build iteratively on what has gone before; and to allow the CER community to make evaluations of which lines of work are progressive, and so worthy of attention and resourcing.

This is not an argument for a ‘closed-shop’ with exclusive programmes of research, nor for excluding the maverick or idiosyncratic from the field. CER benefits from cross-fertilisation with other disciplines, and the ‘essential tension’ needs to be held in balance. This article is certainly not suggesting a need for a regimentation of research moderated by intellectual thought police, but rather that those leading the field should offer heuristic guidance to channel the most promising directions for enquiry. For any field to remain viable there must be a semblance of structure and order perceived as standing out from the background of diverse activity. CER is not a field of chemistry in the way that transition metal chemistry is, or organometallic chemistry is, or photochemistry is: its primary phenomena are social and psychological (teaching, learning), not chemical.

This can present challenges for CER researchers. For those transitioning from exclusively undertaking research in the natural sciences, this can require a substantive reorientation in relation to both the nature of knowledge claims and the kinds of approaches that need to be applied. As two obvious differences: natural materials subject to investigation in the chemistry laboratory neither expect a duty of care from researchers (we do not need to take precautions to protect the integrity of strips of magnesium or aliquots of sulphuric acid that are subject to laboratory manipulations), nor change their properties in response to being selected as the sample to be tested or because they suspect they know what the researcher is looking for. By contrast, people are entitled to expect researchers to both avoid doing anything likely to harm them (which includes disrupting their learning), and to take their preferences (such as declining to participate) into account; and may also have their attitudes and motivations (and so their responses) modified by the attention of researchers and/or tacitly communicated researcher expectations (Taber, 2019b ).

For those based in chemistry or other natural science departments, another challenge can be the attitudes and perceptions of colleagues. The norms of CER may not be appreciated by colleagues with no background in research in the social sciences, which are often considered to be ‘softer’ (and so by implication less rigorous or demanding) than the ‘hard’ sciences. Commitment to CER enquiries may not always be accepted as a valid alternative to chemistry research, especially in a context where university research is evaluated along disciplinary lines and CER publications are considered ‘education’ rather than ‘chemistry’ outputs.

For CER to count as ‘disciplinary’ research it needs to be an identifiable discipline in its own right and not simply borrow credence from being associated with the discipline of chemistry. I hope this article has offered some ideas regarding how this can be maintained and developed in practice.

Availability of data and materials

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Abbreviations

Chemistry education research

Chemistry teaching and learning contexts

Pedagogical content knowledge

Physics education research

Research programmes

Science education research

Science, technology, engineering and mathematics

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Keith S. Taber is Professor of Science Education at the University of Cambridge. He has been (2011–2018) the editor of the journal Chemistry Education Research and Practice , and he is the Editor-in-Chief of the Royal Society of Chemistry book series Advances in Chemistry Education .

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Taber, K.S. Progressing chemistry education research as a disciplinary field. Discip Interdscip Sci Educ Res 1 , 5 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s43031-019-0011-z

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Received : 17 April 2019

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Published : 28 November 2019

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s43031-019-0011-z

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Chemistry Theses and Dissertations

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Bioactivity of Suberitenones A and B , Jared G. Waters

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Measurement in Chemistry, Mathematics, and Physics Education: Student Explanations of Organic Chemistry Reaction Mechanisms and Instructional Practices in Introductory Courses , Brandon J. Yik

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Simulations of H2 Sorption in Metal-Organic Frameworks , Shanelle Suepaul

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100+ Great Chemistry Research Topics

Table of contents

• 1 5 Tips for Writing Chemistry Research Papers
• 2 Chemical Engineering Research Topics
• 3 Organic Сhemistry Research Topics
• 4 Іnorganic Сhemistry Research Topics
• 5 Biomolecular Сhemistry Research Topics
• 6 Analytical Chemistry Research Topics
• 7 Computational Chemistry Research Topics
• 8 Physical Chemistry Research Topics
• 9 Innovative Chemistry Research Topics
• 10 Environmental Chemistry Research Topics
• 11 Green Chemistry Research Topics
• 12.1 Conclusion

Do you need a topic for your chemistry research paper? Are you unsure of where to start? Don’t worry – we’re here to help. In this post, we’ll go over a series of the best chemistry research paper topics as well as Tips for Writing Chemistry Research Papers on different topics. By the time you finish reading this post, you’ll have plenty of ideas to get started on your next research project!

There are many different subfields of chemistry, so it can be tough to find interesting chemistry topics to write about. If you’re struggling to narrow down your topic, we’ll go over lists of topics in multiple fields of study.

Doing research is important to help scientists learn more about the world around us. By researching different compounds and elements, we can learn more about how they interact with one another and how they can be used to create new products or improve existing ones.

There are many different topics that you can choose to research in chemistry. Here are just a few examples:

• The history of chemistry and how it has evolved over time
• How different chemicals react with one another
• How to create new compounds or improve existing ones
• The role of chemistry in the environment
• The health effects of different chemicals

5 Tips for Writing Chemistry Research Papers

Once you have chosen a topic for your research paper , it is important to follow some tips to ensure that your paper is well-written and accurate. Here are a few tips to get you started:

• Start by doing some background research on your topic. This will help you understand the basics of the topic and give you a good foundation to build your paper on.
• Make sure to cite all of the sources that you use in your paper. This will help to show where you got your information and will also help to add credibility to your work.
• Be sure to proofread your paper before you submit it. This will ensure that there are no errors and that your paper is clear and concise.
• Get help from a tutor or friend if you are struggling with your paper. They may be able to offer helpful advice or feedback.
• Take your time when writing your research paper . This is not a race, and it is important to make sure that you do a good job on your research.

By following these tips, you can be sure that your chemistry research paper will be a success! So what are you waiting for? Let’s go over some of the best research paper topics out there.

Chemical Engineering Research Topics

Chemical Engineering is a branch of engineering that deals with the design and application of chemical processes. If you’re wondering how to choose a paper topic, here are some ideas to inspire you:

• How to create new alloy compounds or improve existing ones
• The health effects of the food industry chemicals
• Chemical engineering and sustainable development
• The future of chemical engineering
• Chemical engineering and the food industry
• Chemical engineering and the pharmaceutical industry
• Chemical engineering and the cosmetics industry
• Chemical engineering and the petrochemical industry
• Biocompatible materials for drug delivery systems
• Membrane technology in water treatment
• Development of synthetic fibers for industrial use

These are just a few examples – there are many more possibilities out there! So get started on your research today. Who knows what you might discover!

Organic Сhemistry Research Topics

Organic chemistry is the study of carbon-containing molecules. There are many different organic chemistry research topics that a student could choose to focus on and here are just a few examples of possible research projects in organic chemistry:

• Investigating new methods for synthesizing chiral molecules
• Studying the structure and reactivity of carbon nanotubes
• Investigating metal complexes with organometallic ligands
• Designing benzene derivatives with improved thermal stability
• Exploring new ways to control the stereochemistry of chemical reactions
• Studying the role of enzymes in organic synthesis
• Investigating new strategies for combating drug resistance
• Developing new methods for detecting explosives residues
• Studying the photochemistry of organic molecules
• Studying the behavior of organometallic compounds in biological systems
• Synthetic routes for biodegradable plastics
• Catalysis in organic synthesis
• Development of non-toxic solvents

Іnorganic Сhemistry Research Topics

Inorganic Chemistry is the study of the chemistry of materials that do not contain carbon. Unlike other chemistry research topics, these include elements such as metals, minerals, and inorganic compounds. If you are looking for inorganic chemistry research topics on inorganic chemistry, here are some ideas to get you started:

• How different metals react with one another
• How to create new alloys or improve existing ones
• The role of inorganic chemistry in the environment
• Rare earth elements and their applications in electronics
• Inorganic polymers in construction materials
• Photoluminescent materials for energy conversion
• Inorganic chemistry and sustainable development
• The future of inorganic chemistry
• Inorganic chemistry and the food industry
• Inorganic chemistry and the pharmaceutical industry
• Atomic structure progressive scale grading
• Inorganiс Сhemistry and the cosmetics industry

Biomolecular Сhemistry Research Topics

Biomolecular chemistry is the study of molecules that are important for life. These molecules can be found in all living things, from tiny bacteria to the largest animals. Researchers who work in this field use a variety of techniques to learn more about how these molecules function and how they interact with each other.

If you are looking for essential biomolecular chemistry research topics, here are some ideas to get you started:

• The structure and function of DNA
• Lipidomics and its applications in disease diagnostics
• The structure and function of proteins
• The role of carbohydrates in the body
• The role of lipids in the body
• How enzymes work
• Protein engineering for therapeutic applications
• The role of biochemistry in heart disease
• Cyanides and their effect on the body
• The role of biochemistry in cancer treatment
• The role of biochemistry in Parkison’s disease treatment
• The role of biochemistry in the immune system
• Carbohydrate-based vaccines

The possibilities are endless for someone willing to dedicate some time to research.

Analytical Chemistry Research Topics

Analytical Chemistry is a type of chemistry that helps scientists figure out what something is made of. This can be done through a variety of methods, such as spectroscopy or chromatography. If you are looking for research topics, here are some ideas to get you started:

• How food chemicals react with one another
• Mass spectrometry
• Microplastics detection in marine environments
• Development of sensors for heavy metal detection in water
• Analytical aspects of gas and liquid chromatography
• Analytical chemistry and sustainable development
• Atomic absorption spectroscopy methods and best practices
• Analytical chemistry and the pharmaceutical industry in Ibuprofen consumption
• Analytical chemistry and the cosmetics industry in UV protectors
• High-throughput screening methods in pharmaceutical analysis
• Dispersive X-ray analysis of damaged tissues

Analytical chemistry is considered by many a complex science and there is a lot yet to be discovered in the field.

Computational Chemistry Research Topics

Computational chemistry is a way to use computers to help chemists understand chemical reactions. This can be done by simulating reactions or by designing new molecules. If you are looking for essential chemistry research topics in computational chemistry, here are some ideas to get you started:

• Molecular mechanics simulation
• Machine learning applications in predicting molecular properties
• Reaction rates of complex chemical reactions
• Designing new molecules: how can simulation help
• The role of computers in the study of quantum mechanics
• How to use computers to predict chemical reactions
• Using computers to understand organic chemistry
• The future of computational Chemistry in organic reactions
• The impacts of simulation on the development of new medications
• Combustion reaction simulation impact on engine development
• Quantum-chemistry simulation review
• Simulation of protein folding and misfolding in diseases
• Development of algorithms for chemical synthesis planning
• Applications of Metal-Organic Frameworks in water sequestration and catalysis

Computers are cutting-edge technology in chemical research and this relatively new field of study has a ton yet to be explored.

Physical Chemistry Research Topics

Physical chemistry is the study of how matter behaves. It looks at the physical and chemical properties of atoms and molecules and how they interact with each other. If you are looking for physical chemistry research topics, here are some ideas to get you started:

• Standardization of pH scales
• Structure of atom on a quantum scale
• Bonding across atoms and molecules
• The effect of temperature on chemical reactions
• The role of light in in-body chemical reactions
• Chemical kinetics
• Molecular dynamics in confined spaces
• Quantum computing for solving chemical problems
• Studies on non-Newtonian fluids in industrial processes
• Surface tension and its effects on mixtures
• The role of pressure in chemical reactions
• Rates of diffusion in gases and liquids
• The role of entropy in chemical reactions

Here are just a few samples, but there are plenty more options! Start your research right now!

Innovative Chemistry Research Topics

Innovative chemistry is all about coming up with new ideas and ways to do things. This can be anything from creating new materials to finding new ways to make existing products. If you are looking for ground-breaking chemistry research topics, here are some ideas to get you started:

• Amino acids side chain effects in protein folding
• Chemistry in the production of nanomaterials
• The role of enzymes in chemical reactions
• Photocatalysis in 3D printing
• Avoiding pesticides in agriculture
• Combining chemical and biological processes
• Gene modification in medicinal chemistry
• The role of quantum mechanics in chemical reactions
• Astrochemical research on extraterrestrial molecules
• Spectroscopy signatures of pressurized organic components
• Development of smart materials with responsive properties
• Chemistry in space: studying chemical reactions in microgravity
• Utilization of CO2 in chemical synthesis
• Use of black soldier fly carcasses for bioplastic production using extracted chitin
• Bioorthogonal chemistry for molecule synthesis inside living systems

If you need a hand, there are several sites that also offer research papers for sale and can be a great asset as you work to create your own research papers.

Whatever route you decide to take, good luck! And remember – the sky’s the limit when it comes to research! So get started today and see where your studies may take you. Who knows, you might just make a breakthrough discovery!

Environmental Chemistry Research Topics

Environmental Chemistry is the study of how chemicals interact with the environment. This can include anything from the air we breathe to the water we drink. If you are looking for environmental chemistry research topics, here are some ideas to get you started:

• Plastic effects on ocean life
• Urban ecology
• The role of carbon in climate change
• Air pollution and its effects
• Water pollution and its effects
• Chemicals in food and their effect on the body
• The effect of chemicals on plant life
• Earth temperature prediction models
• Effects of pharmaceuticals in aquatic environments
• Atmospheric chemistry and urban air quality
• Bioremediation techniques for oil spill cleanup
• Regulatory and environmental impact of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl (PFA) substances
• Comparison of chemical regulation impacts like PFA with historical cases such as lead in fuel

A lot of research on the environment is being conducted at the moment because the environment is in danger. There are a lot of environmental problems that need to be solved, and research is the key to solving them.

Green Chemistry Research Topics

Green chemistry is the study of how to make products and processes that are environmentally friendly. This can include anything from finding new ways to recycle materials to developing new products that are biodegradable. If you are looking for green chemistry research topics, here are some ideas to get you started:

• Recycling and reuse of materials
• Developing biodegradable materials
• Improving existing recycling processes
• Green chemistry and sustainable development
• The future of green chemistry
• Green chemistry and the food industry
• Lifecycle assessment of chemical processes
• Green chemistry and the pharmaceutical industry
• Development of catalysts for green chemistry
• Green chemistry and the cosmetics industry
• Alternative energy sources for chemical synthesis

A more environmentally friendly world is something we all aspire for and a lot of research has been conducted on how we can achieve this, making this one of the most promising areas of study. The results have been varied, but there are a few key things we can do to make a difference.

Controversial Chemistry Research Topics

Controversial chemistry is all about hot-button topics that people are passionate about. This can include anything from the use of chemicals in warfare to the health effects of different chemicals. If you are looking for controversial topics to write about , here are some ideas to get you started:

• The use of chemicals in warfare
• Gene modification in human babies
• Bioengineering
• How fast food chemicals affect the human brain
• The role of the government in regulating chemicals
• Evolution of cigarette chemicals over time
• Chemical effects of CBD oils
• Ethical issues in genetic modification of organisms
• Nuclear energy: risks and benefits
• Use of chemicals in electronic waste recycling
• Antidepressant chemical reactions
• Synthetic molecule replication methods
• Gene analysis

Controversial research papers often appear in the media before it has been peer-reviewed and published in a scientific journal. The reason for this is that the media is interested in stories that are new, exciting, and generate a lot of debate.

Chemistry is an incredibly diverse and interesting field, with many controversial topics to write about. If you are looking for a research topic, consider the examples listed in this article. With a little bit of effort, you are sure to find a topic that is both interesting and within your skillset.

In order to be a good researcher, it is important to be able to think critically and solve problems. However, innovation in chemistry research can be challenging. When thinking about how to innovate, it is important to consider both the practical and theoretical aspects of your research. Additionally, try to build on the work of others in order to create something new and unique. With a little bit of effort, you are sure to be able to find a topic that is both interesting and within your skillset.

Happy writing!

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Research Topics & Ideas: Education

170+ Research Ideas To Fast-Track Your Project

If you’re just starting out exploring education-related topics for your dissertation, thesis or research project, you’ve come to the right place. In this post, we’ll help kickstart your research topic ideation process by providing a hearty list of research topics and ideas , including examples from actual dissertations and theses..

PS – This is just the start…

We know it’s exciting to run through a list of research topics, but please keep in mind that this list is just a starting point . To develop a suitable education-related research topic, you’ll need to identify a clear and convincing research gap , and a viable plan of action to fill that gap.

If this sounds foreign to you, check out our free research topic webinar that explores how to find and refine a high-quality research topic, from scratch. Alternatively, if you’d like hands-on help, consider our 1-on-1 coaching service .

Overview: Education Research Topics

• How to find a research topic (video)
• List of 50+ education-related research topics/ideas
• List of 120+ level-specific research topics 
• Examples of actual dissertation topics in education
• Tips to fast-track your topic ideation (video)
• Free Webinar : Topic Ideation 101
• Where to get extra help

Education-Related Research Topics & Ideas

Below you’ll find a list of education-related research topics and idea kickstarters. These are fairly broad and flexible to various contexts, so keep in mind that you will need to refine them a little. Nevertheless, they should inspire some ideas for your project.

• The impact of school funding on student achievement
• The effects of social and emotional learning on student well-being
• The effects of parental involvement on student behaviour
• The impact of teacher training on student learning
• The impact of classroom design on student learning
• The impact of poverty on education
• The use of student data to inform instruction
• The role of parental involvement in education
• The effects of mindfulness practices in the classroom
• The use of technology in the classroom
• The role of critical thinking in education
• The use of formative and summative assessments in the classroom
• The use of differentiated instruction in the classroom
• The use of gamification in education
• The effects of teacher burnout on student learning
• The impact of school leadership on student achievement
• The effects of teacher diversity on student outcomes
• The role of teacher collaboration in improving student outcomes
• The implementation of blended and online learning
• The effects of teacher accountability on student achievement
• The effects of standardized testing on student learning
• The effects of classroom management on student behaviour
• The effects of school culture on student achievement
• The use of student-centred learning in the classroom
• The impact of teacher-student relationships on student outcomes
• The achievement gap in minority and low-income students
• The use of culturally responsive teaching in the classroom
• The impact of teacher professional development on student learning
• The use of project-based learning in the classroom
• The effects of teacher expectations on student achievement
• The use of adaptive learning technology in the classroom
• The impact of teacher turnover on student learning
• The effects of teacher recruitment and retention on student learning
• The impact of early childhood education on later academic success
• The impact of parental involvement on student engagement
• The use of positive reinforcement in education
• The impact of school climate on student engagement
• The role of STEM education in preparing students for the workforce
• The effects of school choice on student achievement
• The use of technology in the form of online tutoring

Level-Specific Research Topics

Looking for research topics for a specific level of education? We’ve got you covered. Below you can find research topic ideas for primary, secondary and tertiary-level education contexts. Click the relevant level to view the respective list.

Research Topics: Pick An Education Level

Primary education.

• Investigating the effects of peer tutoring on academic achievement in primary school
• Exploring the benefits of mindfulness practices in primary school classrooms
• Examining the effects of different teaching strategies on primary school students’ problem-solving skills
• The use of storytelling as a teaching strategy in primary school literacy instruction
• The role of cultural diversity in promoting tolerance and understanding in primary schools
• The impact of character education programs on moral development in primary school students
• Investigating the use of technology in enhancing primary school mathematics education
• The impact of inclusive curriculum on promoting equity and diversity in primary schools
• The impact of outdoor education programs on environmental awareness in primary school students
• The influence of school climate on student motivation and engagement in primary schools
• Investigating the effects of early literacy interventions on reading comprehension in primary school students
• The impact of parental involvement in school decision-making processes on student achievement in primary schools
• Exploring the benefits of inclusive education for students with special needs in primary schools
• Investigating the effects of teacher-student feedback on academic motivation in primary schools
• The role of technology in developing digital literacy skills in primary school students
• Effective strategies for fostering a growth mindset in primary school students
• Investigating the role of parental support in reducing academic stress in primary school children
• The role of arts education in fostering creativity and self-expression in primary school students
• Examining the effects of early childhood education programs on primary school readiness
• Examining the effects of homework on primary school students’ academic performance
• The role of formative assessment in improving learning outcomes in primary school classrooms
• The impact of teacher-student relationships on academic outcomes in primary school
• Investigating the effects of classroom environment on student behavior and learning outcomes in primary schools
• Investigating the role of creativity and imagination in primary school curriculum
• The impact of nutrition and healthy eating programs on academic performance in primary schools
• The impact of social-emotional learning programs on primary school students’ well-being and academic performance
• The role of parental involvement in academic achievement of primary school children
• Examining the effects of classroom management strategies on student behavior in primary school
• The role of school leadership in creating a positive school climate Exploring the benefits of bilingual education in primary schools
• The effectiveness of project-based learning in developing critical thinking skills in primary school students
• The role of inquiry-based learning in fostering curiosity and critical thinking in primary school students
• The effects of class size on student engagement and achievement in primary schools
• Investigating the effects of recess and physical activity breaks on attention and learning in primary school
• Exploring the benefits of outdoor play in developing gross motor skills in primary school children
• The effects of educational field trips on knowledge retention in primary school students
• Examining the effects of inclusive classroom practices on students’ attitudes towards diversity in primary schools
• The impact of parental involvement in homework on primary school students’ academic achievement
• Investigating the effectiveness of different assessment methods in primary school classrooms
• The influence of physical activity and exercise on cognitive development in primary school children
• Exploring the benefits of cooperative learning in promoting social skills in primary school students

Secondary Education

• Investigating the effects of school discipline policies on student behavior and academic success in secondary education
• The role of social media in enhancing communication and collaboration among secondary school students
• The impact of school leadership on teacher effectiveness and student outcomes in secondary schools
• Investigating the effects of technology integration on teaching and learning in secondary education
• Exploring the benefits of interdisciplinary instruction in promoting critical thinking skills in secondary schools
• The impact of arts education on creativity and self-expression in secondary school students
• The effectiveness of flipped classrooms in promoting student learning in secondary education
• The role of career guidance programs in preparing secondary school students for future employment
• Investigating the effects of student-centered learning approaches on student autonomy and academic success in secondary schools
• The impact of socio-economic factors on educational attainment in secondary education
• Investigating the impact of project-based learning on student engagement and academic achievement in secondary schools
• Investigating the effects of multicultural education on cultural understanding and tolerance in secondary schools
• The influence of standardized testing on teaching practices and student learning in secondary education
• Investigating the effects of classroom management strategies on student behavior and academic engagement in secondary education
• The influence of teacher professional development on instructional practices and student outcomes in secondary schools
• The role of extracurricular activities in promoting holistic development and well-roundedness in secondary school students
• Investigating the effects of blended learning models on student engagement and achievement in secondary education
• The role of physical education in promoting physical health and well-being among secondary school students
• Investigating the effects of gender on academic achievement and career aspirations in secondary education
• Exploring the benefits of multicultural literature in promoting cultural awareness and empathy among secondary school students
• The impact of school counseling services on student mental health and well-being in secondary schools
• Exploring the benefits of vocational education and training in preparing secondary school students for the workforce
• The role of digital literacy in preparing secondary school students for the digital age
• The influence of parental involvement on academic success and well-being of secondary school students
• The impact of social-emotional learning programs on secondary school students’ well-being and academic success
• The role of character education in fostering ethical and responsible behavior in secondary school students
• Examining the effects of digital citizenship education on responsible and ethical technology use among secondary school students
• The impact of parental involvement in school decision-making processes on student outcomes in secondary schools
• The role of educational technology in promoting personalized learning experiences in secondary schools
• The impact of inclusive education on the social and academic outcomes of students with disabilities in secondary schools
• The influence of parental support on academic motivation and achievement in secondary education
• The role of school climate in promoting positive behavior and well-being among secondary school students
• Examining the effects of peer mentoring programs on academic achievement and social-emotional development in secondary schools
• Examining the effects of teacher-student relationships on student motivation and achievement in secondary schools
• Exploring the benefits of service-learning programs in promoting civic engagement among secondary school students
• The impact of educational policies on educational equity and access in secondary education
• Examining the effects of homework on academic achievement and student well-being in secondary education
• Investigating the effects of different assessment methods on student performance in secondary schools
• Examining the effects of single-sex education on academic performance and gender stereotypes in secondary schools
• The role of mentoring programs in supporting the transition from secondary to post-secondary education

Tertiary Education

• The role of student support services in promoting academic success and well-being in higher education
• The impact of internationalization initiatives on students’ intercultural competence and global perspectives in tertiary education
• Investigating the effects of active learning classrooms and learning spaces on student engagement and learning outcomes in tertiary education
• Exploring the benefits of service-learning experiences in fostering civic engagement and social responsibility in higher education
• The influence of learning communities and collaborative learning environments on student academic and social integration in higher education
• Exploring the benefits of undergraduate research experiences in fostering critical thinking and scientific inquiry skills
• Investigating the effects of academic advising and mentoring on student retention and degree completion in higher education
• The role of student engagement and involvement in co-curricular activities on holistic student development in higher education
• The impact of multicultural education on fostering cultural competence and diversity appreciation in higher education
• The role of internships and work-integrated learning experiences in enhancing students’ employability and career outcomes
• Examining the effects of assessment and feedback practices on student learning and academic achievement in tertiary education
• The influence of faculty professional development on instructional practices and student outcomes in tertiary education
• The influence of faculty-student relationships on student success and well-being in tertiary education
• The impact of college transition programs on students’ academic and social adjustment to higher education
• The impact of online learning platforms on student learning outcomes in higher education
• The impact of financial aid and scholarships on access and persistence in higher education
• The influence of student leadership and involvement in extracurricular activities on personal development and campus engagement
• Exploring the benefits of competency-based education in developing job-specific skills in tertiary students
• Examining the effects of flipped classroom models on student learning and retention in higher education
• Exploring the benefits of online collaboration and virtual team projects in developing teamwork skills in tertiary students
• Investigating the effects of diversity and inclusion initiatives on campus climate and student experiences in tertiary education
• The influence of study abroad programs on intercultural competence and global perspectives of college students
• Investigating the effects of peer mentoring and tutoring programs on student retention and academic performance in tertiary education
• Investigating the effectiveness of active learning strategies in promoting student engagement and achievement in tertiary education
• Investigating the effects of blended learning models and hybrid courses on student learning and satisfaction in higher education
• The role of digital literacy and information literacy skills in supporting student success in the digital age
• Investigating the effects of experiential learning opportunities on career readiness and employability of college students
• The impact of e-portfolios on student reflection, self-assessment, and showcasing of learning in higher education
• The role of technology in enhancing collaborative learning experiences in tertiary classrooms
• The impact of research opportunities on undergraduate student engagement and pursuit of advanced degrees
• Examining the effects of competency-based assessment on measuring student learning and achievement in tertiary education
• Examining the effects of interdisciplinary programs and courses on critical thinking and problem-solving skills in college students
• The role of inclusive education and accessibility in promoting equitable learning experiences for diverse student populations
• The role of career counseling and guidance in supporting students’ career decision-making in tertiary education
• The influence of faculty diversity and representation on student success and inclusive learning environments in higher education

Education-Related Dissertations & Theses

While the ideas we’ve presented above are a decent starting point for finding a research topic in education, they are fairly generic and non-specific. So, it helps to look at actual dissertations and theses in the education space to see how this all comes together in practice.

Below, we’ve included a selection of education-related research projects to help refine your thinking. These are actual dissertations and theses, written as part of Master’s and PhD-level programs, so they can provide some useful insight as to what a research topic looks like in practice.

• From Rural to Urban: Education Conditions of Migrant Children in China (Wang, 2019)
• Energy Renovation While Learning English: A Guidebook for Elementary ESL Teachers (Yang, 2019)
• A Reanalyses of Intercorrelational Matrices of Visual and Verbal Learners’ Abilities, Cognitive Styles, and Learning Preferences (Fox, 2020)
• A study of the elementary math program utilized by a mid-Missouri school district (Barabas, 2020)
• Instructor formative assessment practices in virtual learning environments : a posthumanist sociomaterial perspective (Burcks, 2019)
• Higher education students services: a qualitative study of two mid-size universities’ direct exchange programs (Kinde, 2020)
• Exploring editorial leadership : a qualitative study of scholastic journalism advisers teaching leadership in Missouri secondary schools (Lewis, 2020)
• Selling the virtual university: a multimodal discourse analysis of marketing for online learning (Ludwig, 2020)
• Advocacy and accountability in school counselling: assessing the use of data as related to professional self-efficacy (Matthews, 2020)
• The use of an application screening assessment as a predictor of teaching retention at a midwestern, K-12, public school district (Scarbrough, 2020)
• Core values driving sustained elite performance cultures (Beiner, 2020)
• Educative features of upper elementary Eureka math curriculum (Dwiggins, 2020)
• How female principals nurture adult learning opportunities in successful high schools with challenging student demographics (Woodward, 2020)
• The disproportionality of Black Males in Special Education: A Case Study Analysis of Educator Perceptions in a Southeastern Urban High School (McCrae, 2021)

As you can see, these research topics are a lot more focused than the generic topic ideas we presented earlier. So, in order for you to develop a high-quality research topic, you’ll need to get specific and laser-focused on a specific context with specific variables of interest.  In the video below, we explore some other important things you’ll need to consider when crafting your research topic.

Get 1-On-1 Help

If you’re still unsure about how to find a quality research topic within education, check out our Research Topic Kickstarter service, which is the perfect starting point for developing a unique, well-justified research topic.

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66 Comments

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Special education

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Research title related to school of students

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Research title related to students

My field is research measurement and evaluation. Need dissertation topics in the field

Assalam o Alaikum I’m a student Bs educational Resarch and evaluation I’m confused to choose My thesis title please help me in choose the thesis title

Good idea I’m going to teach my colleagues

You can find our list of nursing-related research topic ideas here: https://gradcoach.com/research-topics-nursing/

Write on action research topic, using guidance and counseling to address unwanted teenage pregnancy in school

Thanks a lot

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Thank you for the information.. I would like to request a topic based on school major in social studies

parental involvement and students academic performance

Science education topics?

plz tell me if you got some good topics, im here for finding research topic for masters degree

How about School management and supervision pls.?

Hi i am an Deputy Principal in a primary school. My wish is to srudy foe Master’s degree in Education.Please advice me on which topic can be relevant for me. Thanks.

Every topic proposed above on primary education is a starting point for me. I appreciate immensely the team that has sat down to make a detail of these selected topics just for beginners like us. Be blessed.

Kindly help me with the research questions on the topic” Effects of workplace conflict on the employees’ job performance”. The effects can be applicable in every institution,enterprise or organisation.

Greetings, I am a student majoring in Sociology and minoring in Public Administration. I’m considering any recommended research topic in the field of Sociology.

I’m a student pursuing Mphil in Basic education and I’m considering any recommended research proposal topic in my field of study

Research Defense for students in senior high

Kindly help me with a research topic in educational psychology. Ph.D level. Thank you.

Project-based learning is a teaching/learning type,if well applied in a classroom setting will yield serious positive impact. What can a teacher do to implement this in a disadvantaged zone like “North West Region of Cameroon ( hinterland) where war has brought about prolonged and untold sufferings on the indegins?

I wish to get help on topics of research on educational administration

I wish to get help on topics of research on educational administration PhD level

I am also looking for such type of title

I am a student of undergraduate, doing research on how to use guidance and counseling to address unwanted teenage pregnancy in school

the topics are very good regarding research & education .

Can i request your suggestion topic for my Thesis about Teachers as an OFW. thanx you

Would like to request for suggestions on a topic in Economics of education,PhD level

Would like to request for suggestions on a topic in Economics of education

Hi 👋 I request that you help me with a written research proposal about education the format

Am offering degree in education senior high School Accounting. I want a topic for my project work

l would like to request suggestions on a topic in managing teaching and learning, PhD level (educational leadership and management)

request suggestions on a topic in managing teaching and learning, PhD level (educational leadership and management)

I would to inquire on research topics on Educational psychology, Masters degree

I am PhD student, I am searching my Research topic, It should be innovative,my area of interest is online education,use of technology in education

request suggestion on topic in masters in medical education .

Look at British Library as they keep a copy of all PhDs in the UK Core.ac.uk to access Open University and 6 other university e-archives, pdf downloads mostly available, all free.

May I also ask for a topic based on mathematics education for college teaching, please?

Please I am a masters student of the department of Teacher Education, Faculty of Education Please I am in need of proposed project topics to help with my final year thesis

Am a PhD student in Educational Foundations would like a sociological topic. Thank

please i need a proposed thesis project regardging computer science

Greetings and Regards I am a doctoral student in the field of philosophy of education. I am looking for a new topic for my thesis. Because of my work in the elementary school, I am looking for a topic that is from the field of elementary education and is related to the philosophy of education.

Masters student in the field of curriculum, any ideas of a research topic on low achiever students

In the field of curriculum any ideas of a research topic on deconalization in contextualization of digital teaching and learning through in higher education

Amazing guidelines

I am a graduate with two masters. 1) Master of arts in religious studies and 2) Master in education in foundations of education. I intend to do a Ph.D. on my second master’s, however, I need to bring both masters together through my Ph.D. research. can I do something like, ” The contribution of Philosophy of education for a quality religion education in Kenya”? kindly, assist and be free to suggest a similar topic that will bring together the two masters. thanks in advance

Hi, I am an Early childhood trainer as well as a researcher, I need more support on this topic: The impact of early childhood education on later academic success.

I’m a student in upper level secondary school and I need your support in this research topics: “Impact of incorporating project -based learning in teaching English language skills in secondary schools”.

Although research activities and topics should stem from reflection on one’s practice, I found this site valuable as it effectively addressed many issues we have been experiencing as practitioners.

Your style is unique in comparison to other folks I’ve read stuff from. Thanks for posting when you have the opportunity, Guess I will just book mark this site.

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Undergraduate Research in Chemistry Guide

Research is the pursuit of new knowledge through the process of discovery. Scientific research involves diligent inquiry and systematic observation of phenomena. Most scientific research projects involve experimentation, often requiring testing the effect of changing conditions on the results. The conditions under which specific observations are made must be carefully controlled, and records must be meticulously maintained. This ensures that observations and results can be are reproduced. Scientific research can be basic (fundamental) or applied. What is the difference? The National Science Foundation uses the following definitions in its resource surveys:

• Basic research The objective of basic research is to gain more comprehensive knowledge or understanding of the subject under study, without specific applications in mind. In industry, basic research is defined as research that advances scientific knowledge but does not have specific immediate commercial objectives, although it may be in fields of present or potential commercial interest.
• Applied research Applied research is aimed at gaining knowledge or understanding to determine the means by which a specific, recognized need may be met. In industry, applied research includes investigations oriented to discovering new scientific knowledge that has specific commercial objectives with respect to products, processes, or services.

Get on the path to graduate school with our comprehensive guide to selecting an institution and preparing for graduate studies.

What is research at the undergraduate level?

At the undergraduate level, research is self-directed work under the guidance and supervision of a mentor/advisor ― usually a university professor. A gradual transition towards independence is encouraged as a student gains confidence and is able to work with minor supervision. Students normally participate in an ongoing research project and investigate phenomena of interest to them and their advisor. In the chemical sciences, the range of research areas is quite broad. A few groups maintain their research area within a single classical field of analytical, inorganic, organic, physical, chemical education or theoretical chemistry. More commonly, research groups today are interdisciplinary, crossing boundaries across fields and across other disciplines, such as physics, biology, materials science, engineering and medicine.

What are the benefits of being involved in undergraduate research?

There are many benefits to undergraduate research, but the most important are:

• Learning, learning, learning. Most chemists learn by working in a laboratory setting. Information learned in the classroom is more clearly understood and it is more easily remembered once it has been put into practice. This knowledge expands through experience and further reading. From the learning standpoint, research is an extremely productive cycle.
• Experiencing chemistry in a real world setting. The equipment, instrumentation and materials used in research labs are generally more sophisticated, advanced, and of far better quality than those used in lab courses
• Getting the excitement of discovery. If science is truly your vocation, regardless of any negative results, the moment of discovery will be truly exhilarating. Your results are exclusive. No one has ever seen them before.
• Preparing for graduate school. A graduate degree in a chemistry-related science is mostly a research degree. Undergraduate research will not only give you an excellent foundation, but working alongside graduate students and post-doctorates will provide you with a unique opportunity to learn what it will be like.

Is undergraduate research required for graduation?

Many chemistry programs now require undergraduate research for graduation. There are plenty of opportunities for undergraduate students to get involved in research, either during the academic year, summer, or both. If your home institution is not research intensive, you may find opportunities at other institutions, government labs, and industries.

What will I learn by participating in an undergraduate research program?

Conducting a research project involves a series of steps that start at the inquiry level and end in a report. In the process, you learn to:

• Conduct scientific literature searches
• Read, interpret and extract information from journal articles relevant to the project
• Design experimental procedures to obtain data and/or products of interest
• Operate instruments and implement laboratory techniques not usually available in laboratories associated with course work
• Interpret results, reach conclusions, and generate new ideas based on results
• Interact professionally (and socially) with students and professors within the research group, department and school as well as others from different schools, countries, cultures and backgrounds
• Communicate results orally and in writing to other peers, mentors, faculty advisors, and members of the scientific community at large via the following informal group meeting presentations, reports to mentor/advisor, poster presentations at college-wide, regional, national or international meetings; formal oral presentations at scientific meetings; or journal articles prepared for publication

When should I get involved in undergraduate research?

Chemistry is an experimental science. We recommended that you get involved in research as early in your college life as possible. Ample undergraduate research experience gives you an edge in the eyes of potential employers and graduate programs.

While most mentors prefer to accept students in their research labs once they have developed some basic lab skills through general and organic lab courses, some institutions have programs that involve students in research projects the summer prior to their freshman year. Others even involve senior high school students in summer research programs. Ask your academic/departmental advisor about the options available to you.

How much time should I allocate to research?

The quick answer is as much as possible without jeopardizing your course work. The rule of thumb is to spend 3 to 4 hours working in the lab for every credit hour in which you enroll. However, depending on the project, some progress can be achieved in just 3-4 hours of research/week. Most advisors would recommend 8-10 hours/week.

Depending on your project, a few of those hours may be of intense work and the rest may be spent simply monitoring the progress of a reaction or an instrumental analysis. Many research groups work on weekends. Saturdays are excellent days for long, uninterrupted periods of lab work.

How do I select an advisor?

This is probably the most important step in getting involved in undergraduate research. The best approach is multifaceted. Get informed about research areas and projects available in your department, which are usually posted on your departmental website under each professor’s name.

Talk to other students who are already involved in research. If your school has an ACS Student Chapter , make a point to talk to the chapter’s members. Ask your current chemistry professor and lab instructor for advice. They can usually guide you in the right direction. If a particular research area catches your interest, make an appointment with the corresponding professor.

Let the professor know that you are considering getting involved in research, you have read a bit about her/his research program, and that you would like to find out more. Professors understand that students are not experts in the field, and they will explain their research at a level that you will be able to follow. Here are some recommended questions to ask when you meet with this advisor:

• Is there a project(s) within her/his research program suitable for an undergraduate student?
• Does she/he have a position/space in the lab for you?
• If you were to work in her/his lab, would you be supervised directly by her/him or by a graduate student? If it is a graduate student, make a point of meeting with the student and other members of the research group. Determine if their schedule matches yours. A night owl may not be able to work effectively with a morning person.
• Does she/he have funding to support the project? Unfunded projects may indicate that there may not be enough resources in the lab to carry out the project to completion. It may also be an indication that funding agencies/peers do not consider this work sufficiently important enough for funding support. Of course there are exceptions. For example, a newly hired assistant professor may not have external funding yet, but he/she may have received “start-up funds” from the university and certainly has the vote of confidence of the rest of the faculty. Otherwise he/she would not have been hired. Another classical exception is computational chemistry research, for which mostly fast computers are necessary and therefore external funding is needed to support research assistants and computer equipment only. No chemicals, glassware, or instrumentation will be found in a computational chemistry lab.
• How many of his/her articles got published in the last two or three years? When prior work has been published, it is a good indicator that the research is considered worthwhile by the scientific community that reviews articles for publication. Ask for printed references. Number of publications in reputable refereed journals (for example ACS journals) is an excellent indicator of the reputation of the researcher and the quality of his/her work.

Here is one last piece of advice: If the project really excites you and you get satisfactory answers to all your questions, make sure that you and the advisor will get along and that you will enjoy working with him/her and other members of the research group.

Remember that this advisor may be writing recommendation letters on your behalf to future employers, graduate schools, etc., so you want to leave a good impression. To do this, you should understand that the research must move forward and that if you become part of a research team, you should do your best to achieve this goal. At the same time, your advisor should understand your obligations to your course work and provide you with a degree of flexibility.

Ultimately, it is your responsibility to do your best on both course work and research. Make sure that the advisor is committed to supervising you as much as you are committed to doing the required work and putting in the necessary/agreed upon hours.

What are some potential challenges?

• Time management . Each project is unique, and it will be up to you and your supervisor to decide when to be in the lab and how to best utilize the time available to move the project forward.
• Different approaches and styles . Not everyone is as clean and respectful of the equipment of others as you are. Not everyone is as punctual as you are. Not everyone follows safety procedures as diligently as you do. Some groups have established protocols for keeping the lab and equipment clean, for borrowing equipment from other members, for handling common equipment, for research meetings, for specific safety procedures, etc. Part of learning to work in a team is to avoid unnecessary conflict while establishing your ground to doing your work efficiently.
• “The project does not work.” This is a statement that advisors commonly hear from students. Although projects are generally very well conceived, and it is people that make projects work, the nature of research is such that it requires patience, perseverance, critical thinking, and on many occasions, a change in direction. Thoroughness, attention to detail, and comprehensive notes are crucial when reporting the progress of a project.

Be informed, attentive, analytical, and objective. Read all the background information. Read user manuals for instruments and equipment. In many instances the reason for failure may be related to dirty equipment, contaminated reagents, improperly set instruments, poorly chosen conditions, lack of thoroughness, and/or lack of resourcefulness. Repeating a procedure while changing one parameter may work sometimes, while repeating the procedure multiple times without systematic changes and observations probably will not.

When reporting failures or problems, make sure that you have all details at hand. Be thorough in you assessment. Then ask questions. Advisors usually have sufficient experience to detect errors in procedures and are able to lead you in the right direction when the student is able to provide all the necessary details. They also have enough experience to know when to change directions. Many times one result may be unexpected, but it may be interesting enough to lead the investigation into a totally different avenue. Communicate with your advisor/mentor often.

Are there places other than my institution where I can conduct research?

Absolutely! Your school may be close to other universities, government labs and/or industries that offer part-time research opportunities during the academic year. There may also be summer opportunities in these institutions as well as in REU sites (see next question).

Contact your chemistry department advisor first. He/she may have some information readily available for you. You can also contact nearby universities, local industries and government labs directly or through the career center at your school. You can also find listings through ACS resources:

• Research Opportunities (US only)
• International Research Opportunities
• Internships and Summer Jobs

What are Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) sites? When should I apply for a position in one of them?

REU is a program established by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support active research participation by undergraduate students at host institutions in the United States or abroad. An REU site may offer projects within a single department/discipline or it may have projects that are inter-departmental and interdisciplinary. There are currently over 70 domestic and approximately 5 international REU sites with a chemistry theme. Sites consist of 10-12 students each, although there are larger sites that supplement NSF funding with other sources. Students receive stipends and, in most cases, assistance with housing and travel.

Most REU sites invite rising juniors and rising seniors to participate in research during the summer. Experience in research is not required to apply, except for international sites where at least one semester or summer of prior research experience is recommended. Applications usually open around November or December for participation during the following summer. Undergraduate students supported with NSF funds must be citizens or permanent residents of the United States or its possessions. Some REU sites with supplementary funds from other sources may accept international students that are enrolled at US institutions.

• Get more information about REU sites

How do I prepare a scientific research poster?

Here are some links to sites with very useful information and samples.

• How to Prepare a Proper Scientific Paper or Poster
• Creating Effective Poster Presentations
• Designing Effective Poster Presentations

Research and Internship Opportunities

• Internships and Fellowships Find internships, fellowships, and cooperative education opportunities.
• SCI Scholars Internship Program Industrial internships for chemistry and chemical engineering undergraduates.
• ACS International Center Fellowships, scholarships, and research opportunities around the globe

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Getting the most out of the UK Chemistry Olympiad

• 2 Your complete guide to the UK Chemistry Olympiad
• 3 What you and your students will gain from the Olympiad
• 4 ‘It’s a really enjoyable experience and good preparation for A-level’
• 5 Join the problem-solving set
• 6 ‘Having a go at something really difficult builds confidence’
• 7 Questions, questions, questions …

Your complete guide to the UK Chemistry Olympiad

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Find out how your learners can take part in this valuable experience that goes beyond purely academic pursuits

The UK Chemistry Olympiad gives aspiring young chemists a chance to explore chemistry beyond the post-16 curriculum. Each year, the four top-scoring participants from the UK competition go on to represent the UK at the International Chemistry Olympiad – in 2025, this will take place in the United Arab Emirates.

Registration

Your school can register on the our website from September to early January. The recommended minimum age for participants is 16. You must be signed up to Teach Chemistry to register. 

Your school can register on the Royal Society of Chemistry Education website ( rsc.li/3Vg21Lv ) from September to early January. The recommend minimum age for participants is 16. Make sure you’ve renewed your Teach Chemistry membership to register. 

Source: © Olivia Waller/Folio Art

Once you’ve registered your school, it’s time to start preparing learners for the written exam and to ready yourself for the marking

This is a written exam that learners take at their own schools in late January. In 2024, 14,915 learners participated in this round. Be prepared, because you grade your own students’ papers and submit the marks to the RSC. Approximately two-thirds of participants receive a bronze, silver or gold certificate for their efforts.

Even a seemingly low score can result in an award … 10 marks out of 82 can earn a bronze certificate

The working group behind the UK Chemistry Olympiad selects approximately 30 top-scoring students from Round one to compete in Round two. They try to achieve a mix of gender, year groups and types of school among the Round two participants.

How to prepare pupils for Round one

Bolstering problem-solving skills is the most important thing you can do to prepare your learners for the UK Chemistry Olympiad, and taking them over past questions from the UK Chemistry Olympiad is a vital part of this. You’ll find previous questions and mark schemes on the RSC Education website. Explore these during extracurricular STEM clubs – find out how other teachers do it or fold them into your curriculum as extension tasks.

Bolstering problem-solving skills is the most important thing you can do to prepare your learners for the UK Chemistry Olympiad, and taking them over past questions from the UK Chemistry Olympiad is a vital part of this. You’ll find previous questions and mark schemes on the RSC Education website ( rsc.li/3WNFDu5 ). Explore these during extracurricular STEM clubs – find out how other teachers do it on page 21 or fold them into your curriculum as extension tasks.

You will also need to expose your learners to some areas of chemistry that regularly come up on the UK Chemistry Olympiad papers but are not covered – or are not covered in sufficient depth – on curriculums. Use the RSC’s  explainers  to help introduce your students to these topics.

You will also need to expose your learners to some areas of chemistry that regularly come up on the UK Chemistry Olympiad papers but are not covered – or are not covered in sufficient depth – on curriculums. Use the RSC’s explainers to help introduce your students to these topics ( rsc.li/4bSOor8 ).

Confidence is key. You may need to help your learners gain sufficient confidence to take on questions that appear impossible at first glance. Explain questions in Round one are designed to be hard, and that even a seemingly low score can result in an award. In 2024, for instance, students needed 10 marks out of 82 to earn a bronze certificate. Use the introductory question resource to help build confidence; practice papers for the Cambridge Chemistry Challenge are also helpful for this purpose.

Confidence is key. You may need to help your learners gain sufficient confidence to take on questions that appear impossible at first glance. Explain questions in Round one are designed to be hard, and that even a seemingly low score can result in an award. In 2024, for instance, students needed 10 marks out of 82 to earn a bronze certificate. Use the introductory question resource ( rsc.li/4bLNXi3 ) to help build confidence; practice papers for the Cambridge Chemistry Challenge are also helpful for this purpose ( bit.ly/3UI20OQ ).

Access the free RSC UK Chemistry Olympiad resources , which you can encourage your learners to explore on their own. Visit our UK Olympiad webpages for more details.

Visit  edu.rsc.org/enrichment/uk-chemistry-olympiad  to access the free RSC UK Chemistry Olympiad resources, which you can encourage your learners to explore on their own. You can also encourage your learners to explore all these resources on their own – visit our UK Olympiad webpages for more details.

This takes place over a long weekend during the Easter school holidays at a UK university chemistry department. It involves theoretical and practical instruction on topics identified as important for that year’s international competition.

The weekend starts with a group dinner, and the next day participants receive lab training and complete a practical test. On the third day, students attend lectures on topics they won’t have encountered at school and then sit a theory exam.

On the final day, the working group announce the four students selected to represent the UK at the International Chemistry Olympiad (IChO) .

How to prepare pupils for Round two

Before Round two, participants receive a textbook – with a list of chapters to read – and samples of past questions. Help your students by going through this information with them.

Being selected for the International Chemistry Olympiad is an honour, and it’s also when training starts in earnest

International Chemistry Olympiad

The International Chemistry Olympiad (IChO) takes place in July each year and involves around 90 countries. To prepare the UK Olympiad team, the UK Olympiad working group hosts online study sessions and two in-person training events. Over a weekend in May and a week in late June/early July, participants practise practical skills, test their problem-solving abilities and receive additional theoretical instruction. Participants also take a mock exam at the end of the training week.

Olympiad successes

Since the UK team started participating in the International Chemistry Olympiad in 1984, it has accumulated 17 gold medals, 70 silver medals and 66 bronze medals. In 2023, Kiran Desai-Kinvig, Kiran Diamond, Perth Saritsiri and Patrick Fung (left to right) brought home gold and silver medals from the IChO in Switzerland.

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A guide to research question writing for undergraduate chemistry education research students

Welcome to chemistry education research

There is no doubt that there are particular challenges associated with chemistry students taking up a project that brings together familiar aspects of chemistry with aspects of social sciences that are likely unfamiliar. There is a new world of terminology and literature and approaches that may initially seem insurmountable. However, as chemistry students, you bring something unique to the discussion on education: your expertise in chemistry and your experience of being a chemistry student. The combination of discipline speciality and focus on education has given rise to a new genre of education research, known as discipline based education research, or DBER ( NRC, 2012 ). The focus on chemistry, known as chemistry education research , intends to offer insights into issues affecting teaching and learning of chemistry from the perspective of chemistry, and offers enormous insight into factors affecting learning in our discipline. This journal ( www.rsc.org/cerp ) along with the Journal of Chemical Education published by the American Chemical Society (http://pubs.acs.org/journal/jceda8) and Chemistry Teacher International published for IUPAC (http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/cti) focus on discipline specific issues relating to chemistry education, and their prominence in being associated with major societies in chemistry indicates the high status chemistry education and chemistry education research has attained with the family of chemistry sub-disciplines.

In an attempt to help students new to chemistry education research take some first steps in their research work, this editorial focuses on the important early stage of immersing in project work: deciding what it is you want to research. Other sources of information relating to project work include the associated editorials in this journal describing more fully other parts of conducting research ( Seery et al. , 2019 ), as well as thinking about how theses published as part of university studies compare to education research publications ( Lawrie et al. , 2020 ). These editorials should be useful to students in the planning and writing stages of their research work respectively and, like all articles published in this journal, are free to access. Guidance on completing a literature review in chemistry education research is available online ( Seery, 2017 ).

What do you want to find out? Defining your research question

The “good” news is that this initial experience is very common. The task at the beginning stage of your first project is to determine what general area you would like to research, and narrow this down iteratively until you decide on a particular question you would like to answer. We will go through this process below, but an important thing to keep in mind at this stage is that work on your first project is both about the research you will do and also what you learn about doing research. Choosing a topic of interest is important for your own motivation. But regardless of the topic, doing a project in this field will involve lots of learning about the research processes and this research field. These associated skills and knowledge will likely be of most benefit to you after you complete your dissertation and go on into a future career and further studies.

Deciding on your research topic

Choosing what you want to work on when you are not quite sure of the menu to select from is very difficult. Start by writing down what kinds of things interest you that could form general topics of study. You could structure these using the following prompts:

• What from your own learning experience was satisfactory or unsatisfactory? When did you feel like you really understood something, or when did you feel really lost? Sketch out some thoughts, and discuss with some classmates to see if they had similar experiences. The task is to identify particular topics in chemistry or particular approaches of teaching that emerge, and use those as a basis for narrowing your interest to a specific theme.

• What issues from the media are topical in relation to education? Perhaps there have been changes to assessment approaches in schools, or there is a focus on graduate employability? What issues relating to education are emerging in reaction to the impact of COVID-19? Is there something current that interests you that you would like to focus on?

• Are there societal issues that are important to you? Perhaps you would like to explore the experience or performance of particular groups within education, or look at historical data and research trends. You might wish to explore education policy and subsequent impact in chemistry education.

It is likely that several broad topics will emerge that will be of interest to you. But you only have one year and one project, so you will need to choose one! So before you choose, take a shortlist of about three broad topics that interest you and find out a little more about them. The aim here is to dip your toe in the water of these topics and get a feel for what kinds of things people do, and see which one piques your interest most, and which one has most potential for a meaningful and achievable research project.

To find out a little more, you should engage in preliminary reading. This is not a literature review – the task here is to find one or two recent articles associated with each topic. To achieve this, you could go directly to one of the journal pages linked above and type in some search terms. With each article of interest you retrieve, use the following prompts to guide your reading:

1. The introduction to the article usually sets the context of the research, with some general issues relating to the research in this topic, while the final section of the paper (“limitations” or “conclusions” sections) give some specific detail on what needs further study. Read over these sections: are the issues being discussed of interest to you?

2. The experimental or methods section of the article usually describes the sample used in the study. If you were to research in this area, can you see how questions you are interested in would translate to your setting? While we will discuss scope of research more carefully below, the task here is to put yourself in the moment of doing a research project to think: what would I do? And then ask; does that moment pique your interest?

3. The results and discussion section of the article describes data the researchers report and what they think it means in the wider context of the research area. Again, while the data that you get in your project will depend on what you set out to do, use this reading to see what kind of data is impressing you, and whether you find the discussion of interest.

This kind of “sampling” of the vast literature available is a little ad hoc , but it can be useful to help bring focus on the kinds of research that are feasible and help refine some conversations that you can have with your research supervisor. While embarking on a new project will always have a big “unknown” associated with it, your task is to become as familiar as possible with your chosen topic as you can in advance, so that you are making as informed a decision as possible about your research topic. Once you have – you are ready to continue your research!

From research topic to research question

While we don’t often explicitly state the research question in chemistry research, scientists do have an implicit sense that different questions lean on different areas of theory and require different methods to answer them. We can use some of this basis in translating the context to chemistry education research; namely that the research question and the underpinning theory are clearly interdependent, and the research question we ask will mandate the approaches that we take to answer it.

In fact, in (chemistry) education research, we are very explicit with research questions, and setting out the research question at the start of a study is a major component of the research process ( White, 2008 ). As you will find repeatedly in your project, all the components of a research process are interdependent, so that the research question will determine the methods that will determine the kinds of data you can get, which in turn determine the question you can answer. The research question determines what particular aspect within a general research topic you are going to consider. Blaikie (2000, p. 58) wrote (emphasis in original):

“In my view, formulating research questions is the most critical and, perhaps, the most difficult part of a research design… Establishing research questions makes it possible to select research strategies and methods with confidence. In other words, a research project is built on the foundation of research questions .”

So there is a lot of pressure on research questions! The good news is that while you do need to start writing down your research question near the beginning of the project, it will change during the early stages of scoping out projects when considering feasibility, and as you learn more from reading. It could change as a result of ethical considerations ( Taber, 2014 ). And it will probably change and be fine-tuned as you refine your instruments and embark on your study. So the first time you write out a research question will not be the last. But the act of writing it out, however bluntly at the start, helps set the direction of the project, indicates what methods are likely to be used in the project (those that can help answer the question), and keeps the project focussed when other tempting questions arise and threaten to steer you off-course. So put the kettle on, get out a pen and a lot of paper, and start drafting your first research question!

Defining your research question

To assist your thinking and guide you through this process, an example is used to show how this might happen in practice. In this example, a student has decided that they want to research something related to a general topic of work-experience in chemistry degree programmes. The student had previously completed some work experience in an industrial chemistry laboratory, and knows of peers who have completed it formally as part of their degree programme. The student's experience and anecdotal reports from peers are that this was a very valuable part of their undergraduate studies, and that they felt much more motivated when returning to study in formal teaching at university, as well as having a much clearer idea on their career aspirations after university.

Stage 1: what type of question do you want to answer?

Some foreshadowed questions that might emerge in early stages of this research design might include:

• What kinds of industrial experience options are available to chemistry students?

• What experiences are reported by students on industrial experience?

• Why do some students choose to take up industrial placements?

• How does a students’ perception of their career-related skills change as a result of industrial experience?

• How do students on industrial experience compare to students without such experience?

All of these questions – and you can probably think of many more – are specific to the general topic of industrial experience. But as they stand, they are too broad and need some focussing. To help, we will first think about the general kind of research we want to do ( White, 2008 ).

Types of research

A second broad area of research is explanatory research, which tends to answer questions that start with “how” or “why”. Explanatory research has less of a focus on the subject of the research, and more on the processes the subjects are engaged with, seeking to establish what structures led to observed outcomes so that reasons for them can be elucidated.

A third broad area of research is comparative research, which tends to compare observations or outcomes in two or more different scenarios, using the comparison to identify useful insights into the differences observed. Many people new to education research seek to focus on comparative questions, looking to answer the generic question of is “X” better than “Y”? This is naturally attractive, especially to those with a scientific background, but it is worthwhile being cautious in approaching comparative studies. Even in well-designed research scenarios where research does find that “X” is indeed better than “Y” (and designing those experimental research scenarios is fraught with difficulty in education studies), the question immediately turns to: “but why”? Having richer research about descriptions or explanations associated with one or both of the scenarios is necessary to begin to answer that question.

Let us think again about our foreshadowed questions in the context of general types of question. The aim here is to simply bundle together foreshadowed questions by question type, and using the question type, begin to focus a little more on the particular aspects of interest to us. The intention here is to begin to elaborate on what these general questions would involve in terms of research (beginning to consider feasibility), as well as the kinds of outcomes that might be determined (beginning to consider value of research).

The descriptive questions above could be further explored as follows:

• What kinds of industrial experience options are available to chemistry students? In answering this question, our research might begin to focus on describing the types of industrial experience that are available, their location, their length, placement in the curriculum, and perhaps draw data from a range of universities. In this first iteration, it is clear that this question will provide useful baseline data, but it is unlikely to yield interesting outcomes on its own.

• What experiences are reported by students on industrial experience? In answering this question, we are likely going to focus on interviewing students individually or in groups to find out their experience, guided by whatever particular focus we are interested in, such as questions about motivation, career awareness, learning from placement, etc. This research has the potential to uncover rich narratives informing our understanding of industrial placements from the student perspective.

The explanatory questions above can be further explored as follows:

• How does students’ perception of their career-related skills change as a result of industrial experience? In answering this question, our research would remain focussed on student reports of their experiences, but look at it in the context of their sense of career development, their awareness of development of such skills, or perhaps identifying commonalities that emerge across a cohort of students. This research has the potential to surface such issues and inform the support of career development activities.

• Why do some students choose to take up industrial placements? In answering this question, our research would likely involve finding out more about individual students’ choices. But it is likely to uncover rich seams that can be explored across cohorts – do particular types of students complete placements, or are there any barriers to identify regarding encouraging students to complete placements? “Why” questions tend to throw up a lot of follow-on questions, and their feasibility and scope need to be attended to carefully. But they can offer a lot of insight and power in understanding more deeply issues around particular educational approaches.

The comparative question above can be further explored as follows:

• How do students on industrial experience compare to students without such experience? In answering this question, research might compare educational outcomes or reports of educational experience of students who did and did not complete industrial experience, and draw some inference from that. This type of question is very common among novice researchers, keen to find out whether a particular approach is better or worse, but extreme caution is needed. There may be unobservable issues relating to students who choose particular options that result in other observable measures such as grades, and in uncovering any differences in comparing cohorts, care is needed that an incorrect inference is not made. Handle comparisons with caution!

At this stage, you should pause reading, and dwell on your research topic with the above considerations in mind. Write out some general research areas that have piqued your interest (the foreshadowed questions) and identify them as descriptive, explanatory, or comparative. Use those headline categories to tease out a little more what each question entails: what would research look like, who would it involve, and what information would be obtained (in general terms). From the list of questions you identify, prioritise them in terms of their interest to you. From the exercise above, I think that the “how” question is of most interest to me – I am an educator and therefore am keen to know how we can best support students’ return to studies after being away on placement. I want to know more about difficulties experienced in relation to chemistry concepts during that reimmersion process so that I can make changes and include supports for students. For your research area and your list of foreshadowed questions, you should aim to think about what more focussed topics interest and motivate you, and write out the reason why. This is important; writing it out helps to express your interest and motivation in tangible terms, as well as continuing the process of refining what exactly it is you want to research.

Once you have, we can begin the next stage of writing your research question which involves finding some more context about your research from the literature.

Stage 2: establishing the context for your research

Finding your feet, types of context.

Let's make some of this tangible. In focussing my foreshadowed questions, I have narrowed my interest to considering how students on work experience are aware of their career development, how they acknowledge skills gained, and are able to express that knowledge. Therefore I want to have some theoretical underpinnings to this – what existing work can I lean on that will allow me to further refine my question.

As an example of how reading some literature can help refine the question, consider the notes made about the following two articles.

• A 2017 article that discusses perceived employability among business graduates in an Australian and a UK university, with the latter incorporating work experience ( Jackson and Wilton, 2017 ): this study introduces me to the term “perceived employability”, the extent to which students believe they will be employed after graduation. It highlights the need to consider development of career awareness at the individual level. It discusses the benefits of work experience on perceived employability, although a minimum length is hinted at for this to be effective. It introduces (but does not measure) concepts of self-worth and confidence. Data to inform the paper is collected by a previously published survey instrument. Future work calls for similar studies in other disciplines.

• A 2017 article that discusses undergraduate perceptions of the skills gained from their chemistry degree in a UK university ( Galloway, 2017 ): this study reports on the career relevant skills undergraduate students wished to gain from their degree studies. This study informs us about the extent to which undergraduates are thinking about their career skills, with some comparison between students who were choosing to go on to a chemistry career and those who were considering some other career. It identifies career-related skills students wished to have more of in the chemistry curriculum. Most of the data is collected by a previously published survey. This work helps me locate my general reading in the context of chemistry.

Just considering these two articles and my foreshadowed question, it is possible to clarify the research question a little more. The first article gives some insight into some theoretical issues by introducing a construct of perceived employability – that is something that can be measured (thinking about how something can be measured is called operationalisation). This is related to concepts of self-worth and confidence (something that will seed further reading). Linking this with the second article, we can begin to relate it to chemistry; we can draw on a list of skills that are important to chemistry students (whether or not they intend to pursue chemistry careers), and the perceptions about how they are developed in an undergraduate context. Both articles provide some methodological insights – the use of established surveys to elicit student opinion, and the reporting of career-important skills from the perspective of professional and regulatory bodies for chemistry, as well as chemistry students.

Taking these two readings into account, we might further refine our question. The original foreshadowed question was:

“ How does students’ perception of their career-related skills change as a result of industrial experience? ”

If we wished to draw on the literature just cited, we could refine this to:

“ How does undergraduate chemistry students’ perceived employability and awareness of career-related skills gained change as a result of a year-long industrial placement? ”

This step in focussing is beginning to move the research question development into a phase where particular methods that will answer it begin to emerge. By changing the phrase “perception” to “perceived employability”, we are moving to a particular aspect of perception that could be measured, if we follow methods used in previous studies. We can relate this rather abstract term to the work in chemistry education by also incorporating some consideration of students’ awareness of skills reported to be important for chemistry students. We are also making the details of the study a little more specific; referring to undergraduate chemistry students and the length of the industrial placement. This question then is including:

– The focus of the research: perception of development of career skills.

– The subject of the research: undergraduate chemistry students on placement.

– The data likely to be collected: perceived employment and awareness of career related skills.

It is likely that as more reading is completed, some aspects of this question might change; it may become more refined or more limited in scope. It may change subject from looking at a whole cohort to just one or two individual student journeys. But as the question crystallises, so will the associated methodology and it is important in early readings not to be immediately swayed in one direction or another. Read as broadly as you can, looking at different methods and approaches, and find something that lines up with what it is you want to explore in more detail.

Stage 3: testing your research question

Personal biases.

Whatever we like to tell ourselves, there will always be personal bias. In my own research on learning in laboratories, I have a bias whereby I cannot imagine chemistry programmes without laboratory work ( Seery, 2020 ). If I were to engage in research that examined, for example, the replacement of laboratory work with virtual reality, my personal bias would be that I could not countenance that such an approach could replace the reality of laboratory work. This is a visceral reaction – it is grounded in emotion and personal experience, rather than research, because at the time of writing, little research on this topic exists. Therefore I would need to plan carefully any study that investigated the role of virtual reality in laboratory education to ensure that it was proofed from my own biases, and work hard to ensure that voices or results that challenged my bias were allowed to emerge. The point is that we all have biases, and they need to be openly acknowledged and continually aired. I suggest to my students that they write out their own biases related to their research early in their studies as a useful checkpoint. Any results that come in that agree with the tendency of a bias are scrutinised and challenged in detail. This can be more formally done by writing out a hypothesis, which is essentially a prediction or a preconception of what a finding might be. Hypotheses are just that – they need to be tested against evidence that is powerful enough to confirm or refute them.

Bias can also emerge in research questions. Clearly, our research question written in the format: “why are industrial placements so much better than a year of lecture courses?” is exposing the bias of the author plainly. Biases can be more subtle. Asking leading questions such as “what are the advantages of…” or “what additional benefits are there to…” are not quite as explicitly biased, but there is an implicit suggestion that there will be advantages and benefits. Your research question should not pre-empt the outcome; to do so negates the power of your research. Similarly, asking dichotomous questions (is placement or in-house lecturing best?) implies the assumption that one or the other is “best”, when the reality is that both may have distinct advantages and drawbacks, and a richer approach is to explore what each of those are.

Question scope

Feasibility relates to lots of aspects of the project. In our study on industrial experience, the question asks how something will change, and this immediately implies that we will at least find out what the situation was at the beginning of the placement and at some point during or after the placement. Will that be feasible? Researchers should ask themselves how they will access those they wish to research. This becomes a particular challenge if the intention is to research students based in a different institution. The question should also be reviewed to ensure that it is feasible to achieve an answer with the resources you have to hand. Asking for example, whether doing an industrial placement influences future career choices would be difficult to answer as it would necessitate tracking down a sufficient sample of people who had (and had not) completed placements, and finding a robust way of exploring the influence of placement on their career choice. This might be feasible, but not in the timeframe or with the budget you have assigned to you. Finally, feasibility in terms of what you intend to explore should be considered. In our example research question, we have used the term “perceived employability”, as this is defined and described in previous literature with an instrument that can elicit some value associated with it. Care is needed when writing questions to ensure that you are seeking to find something that can be measured.

Of course researchers will naturally over-extend their research intentions, primarily because that initial motivation they have tapped into will prompt an eagerness to find out as much as possible about their topic of study. One way of addressing this is to write out a list of questions that draw from the main research question, with each one addressing some particular aspect of the research question. For our main research question:

we could envisage some additional related questions:

(a) Are there differences between different types of placement?

(b) Are the observations linked to experience on placement or some other factors?

(c) What career development support did students get during placement?

(d) How did students’ subsequent career plans change as a result of placement?

And the list could go on (and on). Writing out a list of related questions allows you to elaborate on as many aspects of the main question as you can. The task now is to prioritise them. You may find that in prioritising them, one of these questions itself becomes your main question. Or that you will have a main question and a list of subsidiary questions. Subsidiary questions are those which relate to the main question but take a particular focus on some aspect of the research. A good subsidiary question to our main question is question (a), above. This will drill down into the data we collect in the main question and elicit more detail. Care should be taken when identifying subsidiary questions. Firstly, subsidiary questions need to be addressed in full and with the same consideration as the main questions. Research that reports subsidiary question findings that are vague or not fully answered is poor, and undermines the value and power of the findings from the main research questions. If you don’t think you can address it in the scope of your study, it is best to leave it out. Secondly, questions that broaden the scope of the study rather than lead to a deeper focus are not subsidiary questions but rather are ancillary questions. These are effectively new and additional questions to your main research, and it is unlikely that you will have the time or scope to consider them in this iteration. Question (d) is an example of an ancillary question.

Question structure

The length of a research question is the subject of much discussion, and in essence, your question needs to be as long as it needs to be, but no longer. Questions that are too brief will not provide sufficient context for the research, whereas those that are too long will likely confuse the reader as to what it is you are actually looking to do. New researchers tend to write overly long questions, and tactics to address this include thinking about whether the question includes too many aspects. Critiquing my own question, I would point out that I am asking two things in one question – change in perceived employability and change in awareness of career-related skills gained – and if I were to shorten it, I could refer to each of those aspects in subsidiary questions instead. This would clarify that there are two components to the research, and while related, each will have their own data collection requirements and analysis protocols.

Research questions should be written as clearly as possible. While we have mentioned issues relating to language to ensure it is understandable, language issues also need to be considered in our use of terms. Words such as “frequent” or “effective” or “successful” are open to interpretation, and are best avoided, using more specific terms instead ( Kane, 1984 ). The word “significant” in education research has a specific meaning derived from statistical testing, and should only be used in that context. Care is needed when referring to groups of people as well. Researching “working class” students’ experiences on industrial placement is problematic, as the term is vague and can be viewed as emotive. It is better to use terms that can be more easily defined and better reflect a cohort profile (for example, “first generation” refers to students who are the first in their family to attend university) or terms that relate to government classifications, such as particular postcodes assigned a socio-economic status based on income.

As well as clarity with language, research questions should aim to be as precise as possible. Vagueness in research questions relating to what is going to be answered or what the detail of the research is in terms of sample or focus can lead to vagueness in the research itself, as the researcher will not have a clear guide to keep them focussed during the research process. Check that your question and any subsidiary questions are focussed on researching a specific aspect within a defined group for a clear purpose.

Moving on from research question writing

• Blaikie N., (2000), Designing social research , Oxford: Blackwell.
• Galloway K. W., (2017), Undergraduate perceptions of value: degree skills and career skills, Chem. Educ. Res. Pract. , 18 (3), 435–440.
• Jackson D. and Wilton N., (2017), Perceived employability among undergraduates and the importance of career self-management, work experience and individual characteristics, High. Educ. Res. Dev. , 36 (4), 747–762.
• Kane E., (1984), Doing Your Own Research: Basic Descriptive Research in the Social Sciences and Humanities , London: Marion Boyars.
• Lawrie G. A., Graulich N., Kahveci A. and Lewis S. E., (2020), Steps towards publishing your thesis or dissertation research: avoiding the pitfalls in turning a treasured tome into a highly-focussed article for CERP, Chem. Educ. Res. Pract. , 21 (3), 694–697.
• NRC, (2012), Discipline-based education research: Understanding and improving learning in undergraduate science and engineering , National Academies Press.
• RSC, (2015), Accreditation of Degree Programmes , Cambridge: Royal Society of Chemistry.
• Seery M. K., (2009), The role of prior knowledge and student aptitude in undergraduate performance in chemistry: a correlation-prediction study, Chem. Educ. Res. Pract. , 10 (3), 227–232.
• Seery M. K., (2017), How to do a literature review when studying chemistry education. Retrieved from http://michaelseery.com/how-to-do-a-literature-review-when-studying-chemistry-education/.
• Seery M. K., (2020), Establishing the Laboratory as the Place to Learn How to Do Chemistry, J. Chem. Educ. , 97 (6), 1511–1514.
• Seery M. K., Kahveci A., Lawrie G. A. and Lewis S. E., (2019), Evaluating articles submitted for publication in Chemistry Education Research and Practice, Chem. Educ. Res. Pract. , 20 , 335–339.
• Taber K. S., (2014), Ethical considerations of chemistry education research involving ‘human subjects’, Chem. Educ. Res. Pract. , 15 (2), 109–113.
• White P., (2008), Developing Research Questions: A Guide for Social Scientists , Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.

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Redox reactions ‘mine’ old fluorescent light bulbs for europium

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A new redox method can extract and recycle europium from real-life waste such as compact fluorescent lamps. in just three simple steps this protocol yields the lanthanide in quantities at least 50 times higher than state-of-the-art solutions used by the chemical industry. Researchers have already patented the technology and created a start-up to commercialise it.

Rare earths – a set of elements including all of the lanthanides, plus scandium and yttrium – have become tremendously important in our day-to-day lives, with applications that range from small components in electronics to green technologies such as batteries, wind turbines and electric cars. However, these elements are mostly mined outside of Europe and North America and are difficult to extract, refine and recycle. ‘The sourcing and purification of rare earth elements is expensive, labour-intensive and ecologically devastating,’ says first author Marie Perrin from ETH Zurich in Switzerland.

Another factor that hinders the successful separation of rare earths is that they are chemically similar. Sometimes, separating certain lanthanides and actinides takes up to 1000 steps.

Separation shortcut

In contrast, the Zurich team has demonstrated that simple inorganic reagents can improve separation immensely – in just three steps. ‘We reach separations 50 times higher than current industrial processes, reducing the amount of waste as well,’ Perrin says.

The secret lies in sulfur-based ligands – a bioinspired solution that selectively separates europium from complex mixtures. ‘Tetrathiometallates are common in enzymes and also used as drugs to treat cancer and copper metabolism disorders … but their reactivity with rare earth elements had been relatively unexplored,’ explains lead author Victor Mougel .

Source: © Marie A Perrin et al

Selective precipitation of europium and application to the recycling of fluorescent lamp phosphor powder

In this study, the unique redox properties of tetrathiometallates transform europium into its unusual divalent state, simplifying separation from the other trivalent rare earth elements. After leaching all the lanthanides and actinides from a waste sample using triflic acid, reaction with a tungsten tetrathiometallate creates an insoluble precipitate that contains most of the europium. ‘We reach completion after 24 hours, then calcination at 600ºC yields europium oxide in over 90% purity,’ adds Mougel.

‘Rare earths are essential for modern life … but bear a big environmental burden for primary production and purification,’ explains Eric Schelter , an expert in the separation of lanthanides and actinides at the University of Pennsylvania, US. ‘The selectivity of this reaction evidently enables an efficient separation of europium,’ he adds. ‘The tetrathiotungstate ligands drive a selective redox reaction [towards] the precipitation of a europium coordination polymer.’

A major advantage is that this reaction works with real waste – particularly discarded fluorescent lamps, which use europium salts as phosphors. And, although many factors affect the traditional liquid-liquid purification processes, including the glass of the lamps and the presence of other cations in the phosphor, none of these hindered the recovery reaction, explains Perrin. ‘Our process needs no prior treatment of the phosphor powder, which proves its robustness,’ she adds. Moreover, she argues it makes more sense to ‘mine’ europium from used lamps, instead of natural rare earth ores. ‘The concentration of europium in natural ores is one of the lowest among all rare earth elements, ranging between 0.05 and 0.10% in weight,’ she explains. This contrasts with the concentration in commercial lamps, at an average of 3.4% by weight. ‘From a purely economical perspective, it is much more interesting to recover europium from spent florescent lamps, currently wasted in landfills,’ she adds.

‘Targeted separation of such critical elements, especially from electronic waste, will provide a more diverse and more environmentally benign supply chain,’ says Schelter. ‘It will be interesting to see where this leads. Such methods can inspire new thinking for improved recycling of rare earths.’

The researchers are now working to adapt the technology to separate other lanthanides, such as neodymium , and to further improve the sustainability of the separation process, replacing triflic acid with greener chemicals, such as methanesulfonic acid. ‘We’re currently looking at both the techno-economical assessment [and] the full life cycle assessment, and evaluating the process on a larger scale, thanks to a recycling plant that provided us with a large quantity of lamps,’ says Perrin.

After filing for a European patent, Perrin and Mougel co-founded the startup REEcover with an expert in financing. ‘Together, we hope to turn this groundbreaking technology into a competitive product,’ says Perrin.

Correction: Eric Schelter’s affiliation was amended on 10 June 2024.

MA Perrin et al , Nat. Commun. , 2024, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-48733-z  

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• Earth science
• Environmental
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• Lanthanides and actinides
• Natural resources
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Professor George Barany retires after a 44 year career at the University of Minnesota

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (6/6/2024) Distinguished McKnight University Professor  George Barany retired from the University of Minnesota on May 26th, 2024, after a 44 year career in the Department of Chemistry. Barany, who was most recently honored with  election to the National Academy of Inventors in 2020, is renowned for his long-standing leadership and pioneering innovations in the field of peptide synthesis methodology, for his role in the invention of revolutionary universal Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) arrays for detection of genetic diseases, and for numerous discoveries in the field of organosulfur chemistry, including synthesis of the active ingredient of garlic. 

It runs in the family

George Barany grew up in New York City, often hanging out in his parents’ research laboratories when he wasn’t pursuing his regular school work, sports like tennis, or games like chess. Both his mother,  Kate Bárány , and father,  Michael Bárány , were Holocaust survivors who came to the United States with their two small sons in 1960. Kate went on to build an illustrious career studying the physiology of muscle and muscle disease, and was also a trailblazer on a variety of women’s issues. Michael is best known for establishing the relationship between the speed of muscle contraction and the adenosine triphosphatase (ATPase) activity of the muscle protein myosin, and was one of the first scientists to study live tissue using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. The Kate and Michael Bárány Conference Room (117/119 Smith Hall) was  dedicated in their honor in 2012.  

“I guess before anything else, I was  a math whiz ,” George says as he reminisces about his childhood. Over holiday and summer breaks George carried out science fair projects in his father’s biochemistry lab. George was so advanced in mathematics and the sciences that he skipped undergraduate studies altogether, and went straight on to graduate school from the prestigious Stuyvesant High School at the age of 16. 

At  The Rockefeller University , George worked with Professor  R.B. Merrifield , where he pursued his interests in experimental peptide and protein biochemistry.  He published his first paper in 1973, on the synthesis of an ATP-binding peptide, a project that had its roots in high school research in his father’s lab and a summer rotation project in Merrifield’s lab. George graduated with his PhD at age 22, but continued to work with Merrifield for three more years before launching his independent career.

“I had a lot of beginner's luck. The first peptide I made was my high school science project, which morphed into my first year project with Merrifield. That peptide then wound up being written up in Lehninger’s now-classic textbook. So, as a teenager, I was learning biochemistry from the first edition of the text, and then by the time the second edition was published, it had my molecule in there!” 

Four decades of research at UMN

In 1980, Barany was hired to the University of Minnesota faculty. Over the course of his four decade career, Barany pursued his research interests in peptide synthesis, and developed a myriad of new interests. His research, described in nearly 390 scientific publications, has covered areas ranging from the chemical synthesis of garlic constituents, to studies on the mechanisms of protein folding, to methods for chemical combinatorial libraries, to advances in the preparation of antisense DNA and RNA, and to the development of DNA and PNA arrays for the multiplex detection of genetic diseases. He currently holds 38 issued U.S. patents.

Barany revolutionized peptide chemistry through his concept of  orthogonality , leading to the development of widely used toolkits for synthesizing hormones and proteins. His research group was collaboratively involved in the invention and commercialization of useful peptide synthesis resin supports (PEG-PS, CLEAR), anchoring linkages (PAL, HAL, XAL, BAL), and reagents (e.g., Clear-OX, an elegant “chaperone” for the creation of disulfide bridges) that expanded the range of molecular targets accessible for research. In another avenue of his research, Barany collaborated with Professor  Karin Musier-Forsyth (then at UMN) and Professor  Robert Hammer (then at Louisiana State University) on the invention of sulfurization reagents for DNA and RNA, chemistry that is essential for antisense therapeutics. 

Starting in the mid 1990s, Barany collaborated with his brother, Professor  Francis Barany , and with Professor Hammer, to develop universal arrays for sensitive and accurate mutational analysis, which became foundational for personalized cancer treatment approaches and genome sequencing advancements. This “Zipcode” technology – broadly used for single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) detection and haplotype mapping – was the basis of comprehensive tumor profiling by the National Institutes of Health Cancer Genome Anatomy Project. Advances built on the foundational research of Barany, Barany, and Hammer make it possible to sequence entire genomes in days rather than years, resulting in improved capability to diagnose diseases more promptly and accurately.

“I never thought I'd make a whole career out of peptides,” Barany said in a recent interview. “I just thought it was something that needed to get done along the way to doing what I really was interested in, which was understanding how proteins work, and maybe even being able to design a protein. But, as it turned out, just the process of making peptides turned out to be much harder than it had appeared to an enthusiastic but naive teenager.”

Over the course of his career, Barany has been recognized numerous times for his excellence in research and teaching. In 1997, he was the first Department of Chemistry faculty member to be named a Distinguished McKnight University Professor. His many honors include a Searle Scholar award (1982), the Vincent du Vigneaud Award for outstanding achievements in peptide research (1994), the Ralph F. Hirschmann Award in Peptide Chemistry from the American Chemical Society (2006), and the Murray Goodman Scientific Excellence & Mentorship Award from the American Peptide Society (2015). For his lifelong commitment to “demonstrating a highly prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made tangible impacts on the quality of life, economic development, and the welfare of society,” Barany was elected as a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors in 2020.

Brainteaser aficionado

Outside of the lab, Barany is devoted to his family, and is a lifelong lover of games, puzzles, and sports (both as a participant and as a spectator). Since he began creating crossword puzzles in 1999, Barany has constructed several hundred professional-quality puzzles. His puzzles have been featured in the  New York Times , the  Chronicle of Higher Education , the Minneapolis  Star Tribune ,  Minnesota magazine, and  Chemical & Engineering News , to name just a few. Barany’s hobby has connected him to dozens of new friends and collaborators, and he now enjoys mentoring new puzzlers on crossword puzzle creation. For example, in Spring 2024, Barany and Chemistry graduate student Rowan Matney created and shared a  Pi Day themed crossword for the Department’s annual Pi(e) Day celebration.

Interested readers can find many of his puzzles at the  George Barany and Friends webpage . A new edition of that site is scheduled to launch in the Summer of 2024; please email  [email protected] if you would like to receive relevant notifications.

What’s next for Professor Emeritus Barany?

On June 8th, 2024, a symposium entitled  A Half Century of Solving Puzzles in Peptide and Sulfur Science   will take place in Chicago, Illinois. The event will bring together many of Barany’s closest and most successful colleagues and protégés from as far away as Europe, China, and South Africa, as well as from both US coasts and the midwest. The symposium will feature about a dozen scientific talks on a wide range of topics appealing to George’s eclectic interests – including contributions from his brother and both of his children! Barany says he is looking forward to a weekend filled with engaging discussions and memories to celebrate the closing of this phase of his career. He is also touched by the fact that the  International Journal of Peptide Research and Therapeutics will be putting together  a special issue in his honor .

In his retirement, Barany says he is looking forward to having more free time for traveling with his wife Barbara – herself a retired chemist and educator – to visit their adult children and young grandchildren. Their son, Michael, lives in Scotland, and their daughter, Deborah, resides in the US state of Georgia. “I figure I've had a great career – I've done a lot of things. Now it's time to spend more time with my grandchildren!” Barany also plans to continue working on crossword puzzle collaborations and hopes to pass a love for wordplay on to his grandkids. A secondary goal is to reread all of the required reading from junior and senior high school, in the hope that it will now make sense through the lens of adult life experience. Finally, through the kindness of several colleagues, Barany has put the administrative and fundraising aspects of academia in the rearview mirror, and resumed lab work – with his own hands –  that he hopes will lead to additional high-impact publications.

When he reflects on his time at the University of Minnesota, Barany says his greatest pride comes from the students, at all levels, that he has mentored over the years. “Our lab certainly developed much useful chemistry and had influential insights on a range of scientific topics, but ultimately, it’s all about working with young people and watching them grow into independent and successful scientists and other professionals. It is just amazing, and that is probably my ultimate legacy.” 

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• The State of the American Middle Class

Who is in it and key trends from 1970 to 2023

Table of contents.

• Acknowledgments

This report examines key changes in the economic status of the American middle class from 1970 to 2023 and its demographic attributes in 2022. The historical analysis is based on U.S. Census Bureau data from the Annual Social and Economic Supplements (ASEC) of the Current Population Survey (CPS). The demographic analysis is based on data from the American Community Survey (ACS). The data is sourced from IPUMS CPS and IPUMS USA , respectively.  

The CPS, a survey of about 60,000 households, is the U.S. government’s official source for monthly estimates of unemployment . The CPS ASEC, conducted in March each year, is the official source of U.S. government estimates of income and poverty . Our analysis of CPS data starts with the 1971 CPS ASEC, which records the incomes of households in 1970. It is also the first year for which data on race and ethnicity is available. The latest available CPS ASEC file is for 2023, which reports on household incomes in 2022.

The public-use version of the ACS is a 1% sample of the U.S. population, or more than 3 million people. This allows for a detailed study of the demographic characteristics of the middle class, including its status in U.S. metropolitan areas. But ACS data is available only from 2005 onward and is less suitable for long-term historical analyses. The latest available ACS data is for 2022.

Middle-income households are defined as those with an income that is two-thirds to double that of the U.S. median household income, after incomes have been adjusted for household size. Lower-income households have incomes less than two-thirds of the median, and upper-income households have incomes that are more than double the median. When using American Community Survey (ACS) data, incomes are also adjusted for cost of living in the areas in which households are located.

Estimates of household income are scaled to reflect a household size of three and expressed in 2023 dollars. In the Current Population Survey (CPS), household income refers to the calendar year prior to the survey year. Thus, the income data in the report refers to the 1970-2022 period, and the share of Americans in each income tier from the CPS refers to the 1971-2023 period.

The demographic attributes of Americans living in lower-, middle- or upper-income tiers are derived from ACS data. Except as noted, estimates pertain to the U.S. household population, excluding people living in group quarters.

The terms middle class and middle income are used interchangeably in this report.

White, Black, Asian, American Indian or Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander include people who identified with a single major racial group and who are not Hispanic. Multiracial includes people who identified with more than one major racial group and are not Hispanic. Hispanics are of any race.

U.S. born refers to individuals who are U.S. citizens at birth, including people born in the 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico or other U.S. territories, as well as those born elsewhere to at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen. The terms foreign born and immigrant are used interchangeably in this report. They refer to people who are not U.S. citizens at birth.

Occupations describe the broad kinds of work people do on their job. For example, health care occupations include doctors, nurses, pharmacists and others who are directly engaged in the provision of health care. Industries describe the broad type of products companies produce. Each industry encompasses a variety of occupations. For example, the health care and social assistance industry provides services that are produced by a combination of doctors, managers, technology and administrative staff, food preparation workers, and workers in other occupations.

The share of Americans who are in the middle class is smaller than it used to be. In 1971, 61% of Americans lived in middle-class households. By 2023, the share had fallen to 51%, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of government data.

As a result, Americans are more apart than before financially. From 1971 to 2023, the share of Americans who live in lower-income households increased from 27% to 30%, and the share in upper-income households increased from 11% to 19%.

Notably, the increase in the share who are upper income was greater than the increase in the share who are lower income. In that sense, these changes are also a sign of economic progress overall.

But the middle class has fallen behind on two key counts. The growth in income for the middle class since 1970 has not kept pace with the growth in income for the upper-income tier. And the share of total U.S. household income held by the middle class has plunged.

Moreover, many groups still lag in their presence in the middle- and upper-income tiers. For instance, American Indians or Alaska Natives, Black and Hispanic Americans, and people who are not married are more likely than average to be in the lower-income tier. Several metro areas in the U.S. Southwest also have high shares of residents who are in the lower-income tier, after adjusting for differences in cost of living across areas.

• Change in income
• Share of total U.S. household income
• Race and ethnicity
• Marital status
• Veteran status
• Place of birth
• Employment status
• Metropolitan area of residence

Our report focuses on the current state of the American middle class. First, we examine changes in the financial well-being of the middle class and other income tiers since 1970. This is based on data from the Annual Social and Economic Supplements (ASEC) of the Current Population Survey (CPS), conducted from 1971 to 2023.

Then, we report on the attributes of people who were more or less likely to be middle class in 2022. Our focus is on their race and ethnicity , age , gender, marital and veteran status , place of birth , ancestry , education , occupation , industry , and metropolitan area of residence . These estimates are derived from American Community Survey (ACS) data and differ slightly from the CPS-based estimates. In part, that is because incomes can be adjusted for the local area cost of living only with the ACS data. (Refer to the methodology for details on these two data sources.)

This analysis and an accompanying report on the Asian American middle class are part of a series on the status of America’s racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. middle class and other income tiers. Forthcoming analyses will focus on White, Black, Hispanic, American Indian or Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander and multiracial Americans, including subgroups within these populations. These reports are, in part, updates of previous work by the Center . But they offer much greater detail on the demographic attributes of the American middle class.

Following are some key facts about the state of the American middle class:

In our analysis, “middle-income” Americans are those living in households with an annual income that is two-thirds to double the national median household income. The income it takes to be middle income varies by household size, with smaller households requiring less to support the same lifestyle as larger households. It also varies by the local cost of living, with households in a more expensive area, such as Honolulu, needing a higher income than those in a less expensive area, such as Wichita, Kansas.

We don’t always know the area in which a household is located. In our two data sources – the Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC) and the American Community Survey (ACS) – only the latter provides that information, specifically the metropolitan area of a household. Thus, we aren’t able to adjust for the local cost of living when using the CPS to track changes in the status of the middle class over time. But we do adjust for the metropolitan area cost of living when using the ACS to determine the demographic attributes of the middle class in 2022.

In the 2023 CPS ASEC data , which reports income for 2022, middle-income households with three people have incomes ranging from about $61,000 to $183,000 annually. “Lower-income” households have incomes less than $61,000, and “upper-income” households have incomes greater than $183,000.

In the 2022 ACS data , middle-income households with three people have incomes ranging from about $62,000 to $187,000 annually, with incomes also adjusted for the local area cost of living. (Incomes are expressed in 2023 dollars.)

The boundaries of the income tiers also vary across years as the national median income changes.

The terms “middle income” and “middle class” are used interchangeably in this report for the sake of exposition. But being middle class can refer to more than just income , be it education level, type of profession, economic security, home ownership or social and political values. Class also could simply be a matter of self-identification .

Households in all income tiers had much higher incomes in 2022 than in 1970, after adjusting for inflation. But the gains for middle- and lower-income households were less than the gains for upper-income households .

The median income of middle-class households increased from about $66,400 in 1970 to $106,100 in 2022, or 60%. Over this period, the median income of upper-income households increased 78%, from about $144,100 to $256,900. (Incomes are scaled to a three-person household and expressed in 2023 dollars.)

The median income of lower-income households grew more slowly than that of other households, increasing from about $22,800 in 1970 to $35,300 in 2022, or 55%.

Consequently, there is now a larger gap between the incomes of upper-income households and other households. In 2022, the median income of upper-income households was 7.3 times that of lower-income households, up from 6.3 in 1970. It was 2.4 times the median income of middle-income households in 2022, up from 2.2 in 1970.

The share of total U.S. household income held by the middle class has fallen almost without fail in each decade since 1970 . In that year, middle-income households accounted for 62% of the aggregate income of all U.S. households, about the same as the share of people who lived in middle-class households.

By 2022, the middle-class share in overall household income had fallen to 43%, less than the share of the population in middle-class households (51%). Not only do a smaller share of people live in the middle class today, the incomes of middle-class households have also not risen as quickly as the incomes of upper-income households.  

Over the same period, the share of total U.S. household income held by upper-income households increased from 29% in 1970 to 48% in 2022. In part, this is because of the increase in the share of people who are in the upper-income tier.

The share of overall income held by lower-income households edged down from 10% in 1970 to 8% in 2022. This happened even though the share of people living in lower-income households increased over this period.

The share of people in the U.S. middle class varied from 46% to 55% across racial and ethnic groups in 2022. Black and Hispanic Americans, Native Hawaiians or Pacific Islanders, and American Indians or Alaska Natives were more likely than others to be in lower-income households .

In 2022, 39% to 47% of Americans in these four groups lived in lower-income households. In contrast, only 24% of White and Asian Americans and 31% of multiracial Americans were in the lower-income tier.

At the other end of the economic spectrum, 27% of Asian and 21% of White Americans lived in upper-income households in 2022, compared with about 10% or less of Black and Hispanic Americans, Native Hawaiians or Pacific Islanders, and American Indians or Alaska Natives.

Not surprisingly, lower-income status is correlated with the likelihood of living in poverty. According to the Census Bureau , the poverty rate among Black (17.1%) and Hispanic (16.9%) Americans and American Indians or Alaska Natives (25%) was greater than the rate among White and Asian Americans (8.6% for each). (The Census Bureau did not report the poverty rate for Native Hawaiians or Pacific Islanders.)

Children and adults 65 and older were more likely to live in lower-income households in 2022. Adults in the peak of their working years – ages 30 to 64 – were more likely to be upper income. In 2022, 38% of children (including teens) and 35% of adults 65 and older were lower income, compared with 26% of adults ages 30 to 44 and 23% of adults 45 to 64.

The share of people living in upper-income households ranged from 13% among children and young adults (up to age 29) to 24% among those 45 to 64. In each age group, about half or a little more were middle class in 2022.

Men were slightly more likely than women to live in middle-income households in 2022 , 53% vs. 51%. Their share in upper-income households (18%) was also somewhat greater than the share of women (16%) in upper-income households.

Marriage appears to boost the economic status of Americans. Among those who were married in 2022, eight-in-ten lived either in middle-income households (56%) or upper-income households (24%). In contrast, only about six-in-ten of those who were separated, divorced, widowed or never married were either middle class or upper income, while 37% lived in lower-income households.

Veterans were more likely than nonveterans to be middle income in 2022, 57% vs. 53%. Conversely, a higher share of nonveterans (29%) than veterans (24%) lived in lower-income households.

Immigrants – about 14% of the U.S. population in 2022 – were less likely than the U.S. born to be in the middle class and more likely to live in lower-income households. In 2022, more than a third of immigrants (36%) lived in lower-income households, compared with 29% of the U.S. born. Immigrants also trailed the U.S. born in the shares who were in the middle class, 48% vs. 53%.

There are large gaps in the economic status of American residents by their region of birth. Among people born in Asia, Europe or Oceania, 25% lived in upper-income households in 2022. People from these regions represented 7% of the U.S. population.

By comparison, only 14% of people born in Africa or South America and 6% of those born in Central America and the Caribbean were in the upper-income tier in 2022. Together they accounted for 8% of the U.S. population.

The likelihood of being in the middle class or the upper-income tier varies considerably with the ancestry of Americans. In 2022, Americans reporting South Asian ancestry were about as likely to be upper income (38%) as they were to be middle income (42%). Only 20% of Americans of South Asian origin lived in lower-income households. South Asians accounted for about 2% of the U.S. population of known origin groups in 2022.

At least with respect to the share who were lower income, this was about matched by those with Soviet, Eastern European, other Asian or Western European origins. These groups represented the majority (54%) of the population of Americans whose ancestry was known in 2022.

On the other hand, only 7% of Americans with Central and South American or other Hispanic ancestry were in the upper-income tier, and 44% were lower income. The economic statuses of Americans with Caribbean, sub-Saharan African or North American ancestry were not very different from this.

Education matters for moving into the middle class and beyond, and so do jobs. Among Americans ages 25 and older in 2022, 52% of those with a bachelor’s degree or higher level of education lived in middle-class households and another 35% lived in upper-income households.

In sharp contrast, 42% of Americans who did not graduate from high school were in the middle class, and only 5% were in the upper-income tier. Further, only 12% of college graduates were lower income, compared with 54% of those who did not complete high school.

Not surprisingly, having a job is strongly linked to movement from the lower-income tier to the middle- and upper-income tiers. Among employed American workers ages 16 and older, 58% were in the middle-income tier in 2022 and 23% were in the upper-income tier. Only 19% of employed workers were lower income, compared with 49% of unemployed Americans.

In some occupations, about nine-in-ten U.S. workers are either in the middle class or in the upper-income tier, but in some other occupations almost four-in-ten workers are lower income. More than a third (36% to 39%) of workers in computer, science and engineering, management, and business and finance occupations lived in upper-income households in 2022. About half or more were in the middle class.

But many workers – about one-third or more – in construction, transportation, food preparation and serving, and personal care and other services were in the lower-income tier in 2022.

About six-in-ten workers or more in education; protective and building maintenance services; office and administrative support; the armed forces; and maintenance, repair and production were in the middle class.

Depending on the industrial sector, anywhere from half to two-thirds of U.S. workers were in the middle class, and the share who are upper income or lower income varied greatly.

About a third of workers in the finance, insurance and real estate, information, and professional services sectors were in the upper-income tier in 2022. Nearly nine-in-ten workers (87%) in public administration – largely filling legislative functions and providing federal, state or local government services – were either in the middle class or the upper-income tier.

But nearly four-in-ten workers (38%) in accommodation and food services were lower income in 2022, along with three-in-ten workers in the retail trade and other services sectors.

The share of Americans who are in the middle class or in the upper- or lower-income tier differs across U.S. metropolitan areas. But a pattern emerges when it comes to which metro areas have the highest shares of people living in lower-, middle- or upper-income households. (We first adjust household incomes for differences in the cost of living across areas.)

The 10 metropolitan areas with the greatest shares of middle-income residents are small to midsize in population and are located mostly in the northern half of the U.S. About six-in-ten residents in these metro areas were in the middle class.

Several of these areas are in the so-called Rust Belt , namely, Wausau and Oshkosh-Neenah, both in Wisconsin; Grand Rapids-Wyoming, Michigan; and Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Two others – Dover and Olympia-Tumwater – include state capitals (Delaware and Washington, respectively).

In four of these areas – Bismarck, North Dakota, Ogden-Clearfield, Utah, Lancaster and Wausau – the share of residents in the upper-income tier ranged from 18% to 20%, about on par with the share nationally.

The 10 U.S. metropolitan areas with the highest shares of residents in the upper-income tier are mostly large, coastal communities. Topping the list is San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, California, a technology-driven economy, in which 40% of the population lived in upper-income households in 2022. Other tech-focused areas on this list include San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward; Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue; and Raleigh, North Carolina.

Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, Connecticut, is a financial hub. Several areas, including Washington, D.C.-Arlington-Alexandria and Boston-Cambridge-Newton, are home to major universities, leading research facilities and the government sector.

Notably, many of these metro areas also have sizable lower-income populations. For instance, about a quarter of the populations in Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk; Trenton, New Jersey; Boston-Cambridge-Newton; and Santa Cruz-Watsonville, California, were in the lower-income tier in 2022.

Most of the 10 U.S. metropolitan areas with the highest shares of residents in the lower-income tier are in the Southwest, either on the southern border of Texas or in California’s Central Valley. The shares of people living in lower-income residents were largely similar across these areas, ranging from about 45% to 50%.

About 40% to 50% of residents in these metro areas were in the middle class, and only about one-in-ten or fewer lived in upper-income households.

Compared with the nation overall, the lower-income metro areas in Texas and California have disproportionately large Hispanic populations. The two metro areas in Louisiana – Monroe and Shreveport-Bossier City – have disproportionately large Black populations.

Note: For details on how this analysis was conducted,  refer to the methodology .

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Four Miller School Faculty Members Elected to Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine of Florida

ASEMFL recognizes leaders who strive for excellence and elevate Florida as a national leader in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Since 2018, the Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine of Florida (ASEMFL) has elected leaders who strive for excellence in their respective fields and elevate Florida as a national leader in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). This year’s cohort includes four standout University of Miami Miller School of Medicine faculty members:

• Dipen Parekh, M.D., founding director of the Desai Sethi Urology Institute (DSUI)

• Eduardo Alfonso, M.D., director of Bascom Palmer Eye Institute

• Sylvia Daunert, Pharm.D., M.S., Ph.D., the Lucille P. Markey Chair of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

• Carlos Moraes, Ph.D., the Esther Lichtenstein Professor in Neurology

Leadership in Urological Excellence

Dr. Parekh stood out for “leadership in advancing genitourinary surgery excellence, establishing that robotic cystectomy was not inferior to open abdomen cystectomy surgery and bringing more women into a male-dominated field,” according to the ASEMFL letter announcing the honor.

“Being elected to the ASEMFL is an honor close to home, as it puts me in a group of other amazing Florida leaders in STEM,” Dr. Parekh said. “While we all may have different research interests, we aim to advance our specific Florida institutions nationally and globally.”

Dr. Parekh’s leadership continues to take DSUI to new heights. DSUI risen to number 15 in its National Institutes of Health rankings and Dr. Parekh recently joined the prestigious Clinical Society of Genitourinary Surgeons . Dr. Parekh also received the coveted Gold Cystoscope Award from the American Urology Association.

DSUI is a place of growth and progress, especially for junior faculty, as Dr. Parekh provides viable pathways for grants and mentorships. He also prioritizes gender equity, ensuring women have a seat at the table as faculty and in conferences and research enterprises.

Brilliance in Ophthalmology

Dr. Alfonso, an esteemed physician, endowed professor and leader in health care administration, has led Bascom Palmer to a sustained success. Under his directorship since 2007, Bascom Palmer has been ranked the number one eye hospital in the United States each year by  U.S. News & World Report  and has continually been recognized as having the best ophthalmic residency program in the nation.

An internationally recognized expert on eye diseases and ocular microbiology, Dr. Alfonso is a consummate advocate for ophthalmology and achieving the best eye and vision care for all Americans through advocacy, public education, vision research and discovery.

ASEMFL membership is one of Dr. Alfonso’s many achievements, in addition to inclusion in  The Ophthalmologist Power List of the world’s 100 most influential people shaping the future of eye care.

 “I am honored to be elected to the ASEMFL and to proudly represent the Miller School and our health system,” Dr. Alfonso said. “Each of us brings a unique perspective into the organization as we focus on elevating STEM in Florida, which will have long-lasting benefits for our community.”

Addressing Clinical Problems Through Chemistry

Dr. Daunert’s name is known internationally in the field of chemistry as part of three European royal academies. She was elected to the ASEMFL “for using chemistry and understanding of biological processes to develop biosensors and nanotechnology delivery systems to address diverse clinical problems,” according to the ASEMFL letter announcing the honor.

“I am very grateful and humbled that our Florida home academy has recognized me,” Dr. Daunert said. “My research and contributions to science and technology address global biomedical and environmental challenges by developing technologies employing bionanotechnology. It is an honor to be amongst the great group of scientists, engineers and physician-scientists of Florida.”

Dr. Daunert and her lab pioneered the field of whole-cell biosensors by engineering microbial cells that can emit a signal in response to a compound/substance of interest. The lab also pioneered the development of detecting quorum-sensing molecules — the chemical signals that the bacteria in our microbiome utilize to communicate.

Dr. Dauner and her team have more than 50 patents in the field and have projects in the works focusing on microplastic inflammation, hypothermia nano-drugs and breath sensors to monitor fatigue in drivers and workers, as well as diagnose the early onset of diseases in intensive care patients.

Identifying and Treating Mitochondrial Mutations

Since 1993, Dr. Moraes has developed genetic treatment approaches to mitochondrial diseases, a series of disorders characterized by cells not producing energy. His ASEMFL induction recognized his work “identifying multiple mitochondrial mutations leading to disease and developing novel therapies to treat them,” according to the ASEMFL letter announcing the honor.

“It is an honor, particularly because I was nominated by the late Dr. Ralph Sacco, chairman of neurology,” Dr. Moraes said. “I will have new opportunities to interact with prominent scientists in Florida and find additional ways to serve the community.”

Dr. Moares’ research pioneered the approach of destroying the mutant mitochondrial genome as a correction mechanism. He and his team have published two papers on the topic and are submitting two more. His latest research is in mitochondrial DNA base editing.

Tags: Dr. Carlos Moraes , Dr. Dipen Parekh , Dr. Eduardo Alfonso , Dr. Sylvia Daunert , Engineering and Medicine of Florida

Dr. Stephen D. Nimer Named Researcher of the Year

BioFlorida point to the impressive cancer research work accomplished by the director of Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Dr. Philip Harvey Receives Lieber Prize for Outstanding Schizophrenia Research 

The Brain and Behavior Research Foundation has awarded Philip Harvey, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, the Lieber Prize for his outstanding achievements in schizophrenia research — the highest honor awarded in the field.

Dr. Albert Varon Honored for Faculty Mentoring

The AUA bestowed its 2024 Mentoring Award on the anesthesiologist who has devoted his 43-year career to helping colleagues.

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