Building a Structure for Doing Content-Based Education Research at the Tertiary Level

Abstract

It has been slightly more than 25 years since the Division of Chemical Education was established within the Department of Chemistry at Purdue University. This graduate program was created to promote content-based education research that focused on the particular problems of teaching and learning in chemistry. Another goal of this program is to increase the amount of research being done on the teaching and learning of chemistry in advanced-level undergraduate courses, such as organic and physical chemistry, or biochemistry. A similar approach has recently been adopted within the College of Engineering at Purdue through the creation of the first School of Engineering Education in the U.S. in order to facilitate rigorous education research that goes beyond the limits of traditional engineering education. We believe that content-based research such as the work being carried out in these programs provides one of the best ways to improve teaching and learning at the tertiary level in order to meet the needs of our global and local society. This paper therefore describes these two content-based education research programs at Purdue University in order to provide models for other institutions to apply as they think about ways to meet their nation’s needs.