Friday, 11 November 11:00am – 12:00pm

This seminar will be delivered in Chemistry Lecture Theatre 4 and Online Zoom Please email chemistry.researchsupport@sydney.edu.au for zoom link and password.

Speaker: A/Prof. Elizabeth Yuriev; Monash University

Host: Dr Stephen George-Williams

Title: Mixed-methods research into problem solving in chemistry education

Abstact: Problem solving is often challenging for students and thus has been a great focus of chemistry education research. However, researching problem solving is also challenging due to its complex and multi-faceted nature. It has cognitive, affective, and behavioural aspects. Some of its features can be observed and measured, and some have to be inferred from what people, students and instructors, say. Some aspects can be objectively and reliably quantified, such as “correct answer success rates”. And some are self-reported and/or qualitative. This complexity gives rise to varied and wide-ranging research questions about problem solving in chemistry.

In this presentation, I will briefly address the provenance of research questions about problem solving. I will then demonstrate the use of a mixed-methods approach to bear on a specific research question focused on students’ engagement with metacognition and metacognitive scaffolding for problem solving.

Biography: Elizabeth Yuriev completed BSc (Hon I) in Kharkiv, Ukraine in 1989 and PhD in Computational Chemistry in Melbourne, Australia in 1997. After the postdoc in University of Oklahoma (1998-2000), she returned to Australia and have been teaching chemistry at Monash University since 2001. Her research has initially been focused on structure-based drug design, but in 2013 she re-focused her attention to chemistry education research. Her main interests are problem solving and flexible assessments (aka open-note exams). Elizabeth is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and an Associate Editor of the ACS Journal of Chemistry Education. She published her education research in Chemistry Education Research and Practice, Journal of Chemical Education, Higher Education Research & Development, and other journals.

https://research.monash.edu/en/persons/elizabeth-yuriev