Research Overview

When a scholar enters an organic synthesis lab, they do not just know how to run a multi-step synthesis. Instead, they carefully plan their synthesis considering the latest research in synthetic organic chemistry. In contrast, scholars often teach undergraduate chemistry or other university STEM classes without a research-based understanding of how students learn in these classes. Just as research into chemical reaction mechanisms provides the framework for the professional work of chemists, the Caspari group’s chemistry and STEM education research addresses this gap by providing mechanistic frameworks that inform the professional work of STEM instructors. To do so, our research investigates how student groups learn in-the-moment of their interactions with each other and their instructors and how this learning is impacted by instructor facilitation, class design, and power. In the field of Chemistry Education Research, there is a divide between those who study the chemistry-specific aspects of learning and those who study the social and power aspects of chemistry learning. The Caspari group’s research bridges these two areas of active inquiry and discovers connections between these two otherwise separate lines of investigation.