This week I ran the third Methods in Chemistry Education Research meeting (MICER18). It was a really interesting and useful day – we had a good range of speakers and lots of discussion; certainly the scope of the meeting this year was the most ambitious so far. As the meeting is beginning to settle into a space on the calendar, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to take it forward.
For me MICER operates on three levels. At one level this meeting has a very simple purpose – to share approaches that can be used when doing educational research, and especially applied to chemistry education research. This is achieved by asking speakers to give talks on how do undertake particular approaches, accompanied by activities and discussion – effectively a series of workshops. Over the series (2016, 2017, 2018) we have covered things like doing interviews, thematic analysis, using Likert scales, designing questionnaires, statistical approaches, thinking about theoretical frameworks and ethics, and the holy grail of writing a decent research question. The purpose is to give insight into the language and processes around educational research for the audience of people with a scientific background, who are moving towards the light. The emphasis on sharing methods of how things were done, rather than what happens as a result of doing things means that this meeting can eek out a little bit of light beyond the shadow of the annual Variety in Chemistry Education meeting.
A second level is about identity. Most people working as a discipline based researcher in the U.K. and Ireland will likely be doing this as a kind of part-time hobby, in the few gaps available when doing a full time teaching position. Lack of funding means that the discipline is amateur; people are doing things with not much time and less money. If we are to professionalise, people need to feel confident in saying that they are a “chemistry education researcher”, loud and proud. This is very difficult to do if you don’t feel professionally grounded in that discipline. To gain that confidence, there needs to be a community into which they can situate themselves, and a sense of personal expertise to allow them to make the claim. By sharing methods and approaches, and demonstrating that there is a community, the meeting aims to help raise this confidence. This year we included a “reports from practice” section; hearing from people who are just like us doing CER in their own situation. It was wonderful, and a real highlight of the day, a kind of showcasing of what real live chemistry education researchers look like. I was also struck this year by the number of people in the room who spoke about projects they are working on, or where they were situating themselves on the spectrum of evaluation, reflection, and research. This highlights to me that the landscape is shifting slowly. But there needs to be considerable support; financial yes, but also in terms of identity. This is something the RSC needs to grapple with firmly.
Finally, the entire education landscape is shifting. The growing emphasis on teaching at third level means that those situated in a teaching and scholarship roles are thrust into a political ping pong. At school level there is an expectation that teachers will engage with education research with little support or guidance, save for some grassroots heroes. We aimed to address this head on this year with a keynote talk about this very landscape; one which I think well characterised it and also offered clues as to how we might navigate it. We also included a talk on managing student projects; standing firm in a world where in some institutions, the presence of such projects is contentious.
MICER19
In setting out on the MICER journey, I was only ever really concerned with (and indeed thought about) the first level. I knew from conversations that people wanted to know about the how of doing education research. The additional levels have grown, partly thrust upon us as a nascent community, partly necessary for us to be a community. But there is a danger that in aiming to do everything, the meeting tries to do too much, and as a result, does not achieve the sum of its parts. It is only a one-day meeting after all, and I am left wondering whether we should refocus our thoughts on the first part, and the others will work themselves out elsewhere (come on RSC!).
I’m planning to send out feedback survey and hope to use that to guide the focus of future meetings. There are other less lofty considerations; the meeting was full by February and likely needs a bigger venue. The characteristics of attendees is broadening. While the registration cost is cheap, getting to London is expensive. Getting funding to support the meeting is getting more difficult; there is a limit to the hit that the supporting interest group budgets can manage.
But the interest in, and outcomes of, the meeting mean that I think the effort will be worth the while.