Welcome!

My work in Chemistry Education Research is grounded in four principles: 1) Equity and Justice must be the center of any research endeavor in education; 2) Research-Practitioner collaborations are essential for developing evidence-based actionable approaches that can be broadly implemented by instructors and benefit the department’s teaching goals; 3) Strategic application of critical methodologies is paramount for meaningfully study of students’ experiences; and 4) Strong theories of underlying mechanisms will advance our understanding of how people learn chemistry.

I apply these principles in my research to build an understanding of how systemic disadvantages hinder the success of marginalized students in Chemistry and other disciplines. Specifically, I examine how these barriers on access, opportunity, and social messaging impact their science related attitudes, engagement with the learning environment and choices. I have contributed to solving this complex problem in two different ways: First, my research program has so far resulted in ten peer reviewed articles, seven with me as corresponding/first author (193 citations, h-index=7). I also developed the “Resources for Equitable Activation of Chemical Thinking” (REACT) Framework (Vincent-Ruz, 2020) that applies my four core principles as well as the knowledge of disciplines like, chemistry education research, learning sciences, critical theories, and higher education.