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Chemistry Education Research has transformed how we understand and improve student learning in general and organic chemistry, but inorganic chemistry remains understudied. This gap persists even though inorganic instruction involves complex representational demands, spatial reasoning, abstract formalisms, and instructional traditions that shape how students experience the subject. Using molecular symmetry as a case study, this contribution argues that research on teaching and learning must attend more closely to inorganic chemistry. We outline how challenges in student cognition, instructional design, representational tools, and instructor assumptions interact in ways that affect learning but remain poorly understood. Drawing on frameworks from cognitive psychology and learning sciences, we highlight the need for systematic, discipline-specific investigations into how students learn and how instructors teach key inorganic concepts. Finally, we offer a research agenda that extends beyond symmetry to areas like bonding theory, coordination chemistry, and solid-state structures. By investing in a robust teaching and learning research program for inorganic chemistry, we can develop instructional strategies grounded in empirical evidence, improving student learning and supporting the evolution of the discipline.
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Teaching from the primary inorganic literature: lessons from Richard Andersen
For many who passed through his classroom, Richard Andersen demonstrated how inorganic chemistry can be taught by incorporating the research literature. The Interactive Online Network of Inorganic Chemists (IONiC) through its website and summer workshops for faculty has supported the development and sharing of more than a hundred exercises or “learning objects” derived from articles highlighting research across the inorganic field. Faculty can adapt and implement these learning objects in their own classrooms to achieve goals such as demonstrating historical context, teaching course material via current research, and elaborating on the scientific process. Literature discussion learning objects highlight current and past research in inorganic chemistry and teach students both chemistry content and how the body of inorganic knowledge is constructed.
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- PAR ID:
- 10096660
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Dalton Transactions
- Volume:
- 47
- Issue:
- 39
- ISSN:
- 1477-9226
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 13755 to 13760
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1039/C8DT02669F
