Chemistry Teacher International, Best Practices in Chemistry Education

Editor-in-Chief: Jan Apotheker, and Iwona Maciejowska

The first issue of Chemistry Teacher International was published in July 2019, perhaps as an unexpected 100 anniversary present for IUPAC! Planned a few years ago and announced in Chemistry International Apr 2018 (p. 38, https://doi.org/10.1515/ci-2018-0217), the project has taken a bit longer than expected to get the first issue out, and the second issue will be published in February 2020. For this open access journal project, the Committee on Chemistry Education of IUPAC is cooperating with the Division of Chemical Education of EuChemS, and working together with De Gruyter. Open access is an important factor. It means that teachers in schools are also able to access the articles. No expensive subscription rate is needed to read, print, and use the articles.

Publication costs are kept low and articles are published for $150 while IUPAC and De Gruyter are funding the journal for the first two years.

The first ten articles give a broad overview of projects in teaching chemistry. One group of articles deals with mathematical problems that students face when working in chemistry. These have been presented earlier at an online conference, the ConfChem Fall 2018, run by the ACS CHED Committee on Computers in Chemical Education.

The second issue of CTI contains a selection of papers presented of the 14th European Conference on Research in Chemical Education (ECRICE 2018) held in Warsaw, Poland on 2-6 September 2018 and organized by the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Warsaw and the Division of Chemical Education of EuChemS. Sponsored by ECRIRE, the issue was compiled in cooperation with the conference organizer and guest editor Krzysztof Miecznikowski.

With the publication of the first volume, a milestone has been reached. It is now important that the continuity of Chemistry Teacher International is insured. In order to do that, regional editors in different parts of the world can help in obtaining new articles for the journal, sharing good practices from all parts of the world. In 2019, major events pertinent to chemistry education were successfully held: 8th International Conference for Network for Inter-Asian Chemistry Educators (NICE, https://www.8thnice.org/), the 8^th European Variety in University Chemistry Education (Eurovariety, https://www.monash.edu/eurovariety-2019), and the African Conference on Research in Chemistry Education (ACRICE, http://chemsociety.org.ng/acricecsnconference/). These conferences should be sources for articles for Chemistry Teacher International.

In 2020, a special issue on polymer chemistry will be published in September 2020, celebrating the centenary of polymer science marked this year by Staudinger’s landmark paper published in 1920 “Über Polymerisation” (Ber. Dtsch. Chem. Ges. 53(6): 1073-1085; https://doi.org/10.1002/cber.19200530627)

2020 is also the year for the main biennial International Conference on Chemistry Education ICCE 2020 which will take place in Cape Town, South Africa, 13-17 July. Inspired by the vision of Nelson Mandela who said: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world,” the event will seed a CTI issue to be released early 2021.

https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/cti