Chemical education research in Glasgow in perspective

This paper describes the work of a large science education group (80+ workers) which, from 1969, has been tackling teaching and learning problems over a broad front. For much of the time, the group has worked within a Faculty of Science and has tried to take a scientific approach to the research. This approach is still followed although the Centre is now in a Faculty of Education. At the start, time was spent in gathering facts, looking for common factors, raising and testing hypotheses, generating working models and applying findings to real teaching and learning situations. This paper seeks to present an overview of the work up to about 1997, with illustrations from later work. Although the research applies to all science subjects, the emphasis here is on chemistry. The other papers in this issue exemplify the ongoing research which has arisen from this basic ground-laying and which has spread worldwide. Chem. Educ. Res. Pract., 2006, 7 (2), 49-63