Affective Dimensions in Chemistry Education

Dr. Murat Kahveci / Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Turkey, mkahveci@comu.edu.tr 

Dr. MaryKay Orgill / University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA, marykay.orgill@unlv.edu

Murat Kahveci  is an Associate Professor of Chemistry Education at Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University, who has dual master's degrees both in physical chemistry and science education, and a doctor of philosophy degree in science education, awarded by the Florida State University. Since 2005, he taught various education and chemistry courses at higher education. In 2007, while holding a Senior Researcher position at the University of Chicago, he got the chance of developing his skills on large-scale science education projects and writing grant proposals to leading funding agencies in the U.S., such as National Science Foundation and Institute of Education Sciences. He was appointed by the European Commission (EU) in years 2008, 2009, and 2010 as an expert for reviewing the specific calls for IBSE under FP7 Science-in-Society Program. In 2012, he was invited to Brussels to attend a workshop as an expert about the future options of the
Science-in-Society Program and their expected impacts. He is the author of 'Shared perceptions of professors about instructional interactivity' published by VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, Saarbrücken, Germany. Since Summer 2011, he has been serving as the Associate Editor of Electronic Journal of Science Education.

Dr. MaryKay Orgill is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (USA). After a high school teacher told her that girls couldn't 'do chemistry,' she entered Brigham Young University as a chemistry major (B.S. 1995). She was surprised to find that she actually liked chemistry-and loved teaching it; so she enrolled in a graduate program at Purdue University to study both biochemistry (M.S. 1999) and chemical education (Ph.D. 2003). She continued to pursue both interests as a first-year faculty member with a joint appointment in biochemistry and science education at the University of Missouri-Columbia. During that year, she took on the extra challenge (and incredible learning experience) of teaching a high school chemistry class. In 2004, she moved to UNLV, where her research focuses on using qualitative methods to examine students' understandings of chemistry and biochemistry concepts (for example, students' understandings of buffers or of protein translation). Since her arrival at UNLV, Dr. Orgill has delivered professional development courses designed to increase the science and mathematics content knowledge of local primary and secondary teachers. In recent years, she has also become involved with faculty professional development, as both the international advisor for the Australian Advancing Science by Enhancing Learning in the Laboratory (ASELL) project and as the principal investigator of the corresponding chemistry-focused project in the USA.