
Education Research and Scholarship
As a department, we strive to provide optimised teaching and learning environments to support our students, ensuring an outstanding student learning experience is sustained across our on campus and online programmes.
This approach drives high-quality education research and scholarship to ensure our practice, learning platforms, practical activities, graduate attributes, employability skills, and assessment methods are research-informed.
Our ethos to education research and scholarship is also directed externally, to support our various stakeholders, partners, and the wider public. For example, we actively collaborate with school teachers to support their pedagogy and practice and also deliver research-informed science communication.
Education-based research is embedded into the operation of our dedicated teaching school and is supported by dedicated teaching-focused academic members of staff.
Research areas
Education for Sustainable Development
The Education for Sustainable Development: Agents for Change (ESDAC) programme provides an over-arching framework and directive to align education practice and learning environments to the 17 UN sustainable development goals. This ensures our community of scholars and learners become agents of change, and realise active contributions and impacts across the 4-dimensions of sustainable development, shaping graduates and scholars as discipline-led educators and global citizens.
For more information contact Dr Lorraine Gibson van Mil: lorraine.gibson@strath.ac.uk.
Pedagogy and Practice
Development of modern, innovative, and creative programmes that deliver teaching platforms and assessment methods that critically align with intended learning outcomes.
Sustaining and enhancing high-quality accredited programmes by co-creation and inclusive design of modules and assessment, The Royal Society of Chemistry has funded our investigation into the impact of mental health in undergraduate laboratories through the WELLChem project. We are also interested in diagnosing and ameliorating misconceptions in science education.
Example publications
Careers Education
Within the department, we focus on the development of graduate attributes, employability skills, and student career pathways. We also have an interest in the career pathways of high school students and have been funded by the Royal Society of Chemistry to deliver several projects in this area, such as ChemDiverse and ChemSTEP.
Example publications
Science Communication and Outreach
Many of our staff are dedicated outreach and communication enthusiasts, but we also disseminate our innovative practices to the wider academic community.
Example publications
- Science podcasts: analysis of global production and output from 2004 to 2018
- How Safe Is Your Playground? Analyzing Soil in Scottish Schools through a University Outreach Project
- Preparation of a Polymeric Foam: An Activity Designed to Increase Teachers’ Awareness of the Utility of Condensation Polymerization
Staff |
Research interests |
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Dr Lorraine Gibson van Mil |
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Dr Fraser Scott |
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Dr Patrick Thomson |
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Dr Felicity Carlysle-Davies |
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Dr Donna Ramsay |
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Dr Brian McMillan |
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Dr Sarah Walker |
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Professor Debbie Willison |
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Dr Lewis MacKenzie |
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