Scholarship
I am lucky to have been exposed to people doing high-quality Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) early in my career. One purpose of this website is to help me develop and articulate my own conception of Scholarship, a notoriously vague term.
Going from a synthetic PhD to an education-oriented role has been hard for me, but I’ve tried to find ways of being helpful in the contexts I find myself in. ‘Translating’ the educational literature for (positivist) scientists, and designing effective instruction for my students are some of the activities which have helped me feel most useful as an educationalist in a discipline focused on physical phenomena.
Some reflections on the specific procedures of anticipatory and retrospective administration involved in securing equity in assessments.
I’ve written a book of the organic reaction mechanisms I learned for my finals exams. This blog post gives a flavour of what the book looks like.
A blog making the case for framing awarding gaps as deficits in the validity of an assessment strategy
Johnstone’s Triangle is one model to describe why Chemistry is so difficult to learn. This blog intends to flesh out a brief introduction to the model for people who are new to it, and challenge its uncritical use.
Bloom’s Taxonomy is one way to think about the cognitive skills involved in Higher Education. This blog intends to flesh out a brief introduction to the theory for people who are new to it, balanced with some of the central criticisms against it.
Cognitive Load Theory is probably the dominant model of learning in Chemistry Education. This blog intends to flesh out a brief introduction to the theory for people who are new to it, with specific examples of how it has been used in context.
A short review of a recent book aimed at helping PhD students.
Reflections on how the treatment of cobalt in the undergraduate curriculum might be ‘decolonised’