Profound differences in theory are never gratuitous or invented. They grow out of conflicting elements in a genuine problem. (Dewey, 1956)

In 2012, the National Research Council (hereafter the Council) released a report on discipline-based education research (DBER, pronounced DEE-burr) which outlined what DBER is, the important information discovered by DBER scholars, and methods used to generate evidence within the DBER field. The Council described DBER as investigating education from a positionality or lens that mirrors “the discipline’s priorities, worldview, knowledge, and practices”(Council, 2012b). As such, being a chemist in discipline-based education research implies a paradigm that reflects that of modern Western science. Introduced by Thomas Kuhn, a paradigm represents a tradition of scientific activity/thinking in a scientific field (so-called “normal science”) that has gathered enough believers while still being open to redefinition via revolution at a later date (Kuhn & Hacking, 2012). Within education and social science research, there are different philosophical assumptions that have an associated dichotomy between objective and subjective worldviews (Cohen et al., 2007), such as ontological, epistemological, psychological, and methodological assumptions.

If chemistry education research (CER) mirrors chemistry in its worldview, then CER holds a there is an objective reality, human behavior is deterministic, and through empirical methods, we can make positivistic claims about knowledge—backed by empirical evidence (Abell & Lederman, 2007, Chapter 1). This is reflected in the goals of DBER defined by the Council. Those relevant to this project include (1) understanding how people learn the knowledge and practices of the discipline to inform the design of curricula, which can generate (2) understanding the nature of the development of expertise, (3) identifying and measuring “appropriate” learning objectives (LO) and assessments (AX), and instruction to advance students toward those LO & AX, and (4) understanding how to make education equitable Council, 2012b).

CER operates under the philosophy that there exists an external reality where absolute truth exists, a consequence of the people who make up the discipline, chemists! The goal of understanding how people learn assumes that any principles that arise from our understanding of learning can be applied to any student. Leading students towards expert-like knowledge reflects this ontological and epistemological assumption.

 If one were to analyze the history of paradigms, learning theories, and methodologies used within CER, one would find concept inventories (Mulford & Robinson, 2002), empirical methodologies (Orgill & Bodner, 2007), and experimental design (M. M. Cooper, 2008; Sanger, 2008). Chemists love their instruments and experiments, but we can appreciate the beauty qualitative data can provide (Towns, 2008).

I hope our experience of quantum mechanics has allowed, over the years, chemists to embrace more uncertainty in the state of knowledge, which is reflected in the increase of studies employing mixed-methods and qualitative methodologies (Yildirim, 2020). Furthermore, the embrace of interpretivist/constructivist paradigms signals a shift in the paradigms used in CER and DBER (Abell & Lederman, 2007, Chapter 1; M. M. Cooper & Stowe, 2018; Stowe et al., 2021). Cooper and Stowe highlight the important differences between CER and its parent discipline.

CER studies differ from those in chemistry because (for the most part) the systems being studied are composed of people rather than molecules and are therefore subject to the vagaries of human behavior. Over the years methodologies developed by learning scientists have informed CER studies, allowing the collection of data from which evidence-based arguments could be made. Because CER is focused on how students learn about the behavior of atoms and molecules rather than directly studying the atoms and molecule themselves, the theories that guide the research, the experimental methodologies, and the data-collection instruments must differ from those utilized in traditional chemistry research. (2018, p. 6053)

I mention these paradigms because DBER can be differentiated from the knowledge and practices used in other science education literature, such as critical race theorists. One major contrast is the centrality of expert-like thinking in the DBER literature. In 2012, the National Research Council released a consensus report titled A Framework For K-12 Science Education (referred to as the Framework), which outlined a way to structure state standards for life, physical, earth, and space sciences. At its core, the framework centers on the knowledge and practices of modern scientists; see Figure 2 for the framework’s conceptualization of science activity. The Framework suggested curriculum developers structure their learning objectives around three concepts: disciplinary core ideas (DCIs), scientific and engineering practices (SEPs), and crosscutting concepts (CCCs). These three ideas and the subsequent student learning that would be assessed would be called, at least in higher education, three-dimensional learning (M. M. Cooper et al., 2017; M. M. Cooper, 2020). While the Framework was developed for secondary education, many researchers have found three-dimensional learning applicable to higher education, with some modifications (M. Cooper & Klymkowsky, 2013; M. M. Cooper et al., 2019). Why are standards structured around these three dimensions? DCIs are an attempt to structure learning experiences over time, built around large concepts that connect to many phenomena to promote an expert-like knowledge structure. DCIs are large generative concepts within a discipline that connect to many ideas (i.e., electrostatic & bonding interactions, energy); see Appendix B for all SEPs, CCCs, and chemistry DCIs. SEPs are an attempt to get students to use their knowledge in expert-like ways, given the understanding that the use of knowledge is a best practice for learning. CCCs attempt to structure ways of thinking, like practices, that are used across disciplines and grade levels. (Council, 2012a, 2012a; How People Learn, 2000). The three dimensions (DCIs, SEPs, CCCs) are used to create learning objectives that work to promote expert-like thinking and knowledge. What constitutes expert-like knowledge? The National Research Council’s consensus document on How People Learn reported on studies that compared the difference in ability between experts and novices. In one study, expert and novice chess players were asked to reconstruct a chess board from memory after seeing a short glimpse of a chess board in a specific configuration. The configuration was from a random point in a game; it was not completely random. Experts were much better at reconstructing the chess board from memory (putting more chess pieces in the correct positions) when compared to the novices. Surprisingly, if the chess board was randomly configured, so the pieces were scattered on the board in a fashion unlikely to be seen in a real game, experts’ and novices’ abilities to reconstruct the chess board from memory became much closer (How People Learn, 2000). “Experts have acquired extensive knowledge that affects what they noticed and how they organize, represent, and interpret information in their environment” (How People Learn, 2000). In other words, their knowledge is organized in productive ways, given the stimuli they have seen and their intended use for such knowledge. This provides the impetus to structure educational experiences so that students can develop more expert knowledge. This is often in hopes of promoting transfer, although the transfer is another matter (Bransford & Schwartz, 1999).