Developments in Chemistry Teacher International (CTI)

1 Introduction

Chemistry education is the study of teaching and learning of chemistry. It is a sub-discipline of chemistry, and also it is a subset of STEM education. Chemistry education research (CER) is known as discipline-based education research (DBER). As stated by the National Research Council [NRC] ¹ DBER is the field of scholarly research wherein researchers “investigate learning and teaching in a discipline’s priorities, worldview, knowledge, and practices. It is informed by and complementary to more general research on human learning and cognition” (p.9). DBER studies require expert knowledge of the discipline and the challenges of learning, teaching, and professional thinking within that discipline. Consequently, a high-quality paper in the field of chemistry education research should demonstrate the components of the nature of human thinking and learning as they relate to chemistry, the factors that affect student motivation to initially engage in and then to persist in the learning necessary to understand chemistry and apply findings of chemistry knowledge, and the research methods appropriate for studying human thinking, motivation, and learning.

The Committee on Chemistry Education [CCE] of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry [IUPAC] seeks to coordinate the educational interests of IUPAC bodies with activities worldwide. A key objective of the CCE is to establish collaborative relationships with groups within and outside IUPAC. Education is one of the main pillars of IUPAC’s many missions. IUPAC members are working hard to reimagine the future of chemistry education as stated by Garcia-Martinez ² with the support of scholars who carry out research in chemistry education. CTI aims to serve as a venue for authors from around the world to share their evidence-based best practices, research articles and review papers to the attention of practitioners and researchers in the context of CER defined above. Good practice reports are those papers that report on evidence-based good practices in chemistry teaching and learning at all levels. It is essential that manuscripts submitted as good practice reports are underpinned by robust theoretical frameworks, supported by data that has been analysed, critically evaluated and discussed. We expect authors to test their ideas in real classrooms and develop their ideas based on evidence that they work in practice. Good practice reports, therefore, are expected to cover both chemical and pedagogical aspects as well as demonstrate a sound methodological design and its implementation. Additionally, a good practice report primarily describes an activity with clearly defined educational goals, research questions, hypotheses, or specific learning objectives and their assessment. In addition, a manuscript of good practice reports must address a specific educational issue in the context of teaching and learning chemistry, and include assessment measures to evaluate its effectiveness. This typically involves grounding the study in relevant educational theories and incorporating systematic data collection to support its claims.

Since the launch of the journal in 2019, CTI has managed to establish a broad international author base and readership and has maintained a pipeline of highly topical special issues. To date, the journal has published the work of authors from around 60 different countries with the most frequently published authors coming from Germany, the USA, Israel, Japan, India, the Netherlands, Austria, the PRC and Greece. Figure 1 shows the countries of origin of authors who frequently publish in CTI during the period 2019–2024. On the other hand, the content of the papers published papers shows great variability. As can be seen from the author keywords frequently used in the published papers in Figure 2, the papers cover several chemistry topics and variety of the pedagogical aspects used is more diverse compared to last year's analysis. ³

Figure 1:

Countries of origin of authors who frequently publish on CTI during 2019–2024.

Figure 2:

The most frequently used author keywords in papers published in CTI during 2019–2024.

In addition to developments in the content of the papers published in CTI, there also have been changes in the guidelines for manuscript submission and in the editorial board of the journal. CTI has published a revised version of CTI Instruction for Authors on 1 November 2024. CTI, along with the other IUPAC journals published by DeGruyter, has adopted the ACS style for manuscript preparation and referencing. Before submitting to CTI, please consult the revised guidelines available on the journal website.

In terms of changes to the Editorial Board, Rachel Mamlok-Naaman has stepped down and Iztok Devetak, the chair of the Chemical Education Division of EuChmeS, has been appointed as the new Vice Editor-in-Chief. In addition, Uday Maitra has joined the CTI Editorial Board as Associate Editor. I would like to thank Rachel Mamlok-Naaman for her continuous contribution to CTI since its inception and appreciate her willingness to serve as Associate Editor for the Middle East. I would like to extend a warm welcome to Iztok Devetak as Vice Editor-in-Chief and Uday Maitra as Associate Editor. I would like to express my gratitude to the Associate Editors who currently serve and who served in the past, the reviewers who have served CTI so far, and the readers and authors who have submitted their valuable work to CTI. I would also like to thank De Gruyter, the publisher, and the editorial staff for their professional support in managing the journal.

Four issues are to be published in Volume 7. While two of these issues are regular issues, Volume 7, Issue 2 is dedicated to the 27th IUPAC International Conference on Chemistry Education (ICCE 2024), which was successfully held in Thailand during 15–19 July 2024, and the last issue (Volume 7, Issue 4) is dedicated to the 16th European Conference on Research in Chemical Education (ECRICE 2024), which was held in Portugal during 5–7 September 2024.

We are pleased to announce that CTI has been ranked in Q2 according to the Journal Impact Factor (Clarivate) of 2.2 and CiteScore (Elsevier) of 3.1, as declared in 2024 based on the metrics for 2023. This represents a substantial achievement for a relatively new journal, made possible through our commitment to continuous improvement. We extend our gratitude to all our readers and authors and would be delighted to receive papers from those seeking to enhance the quality of chemistry teaching and learning for future generations.