The Chemistry Toolbox
Year Awarded
2025
Amount
€299,747
- Organisation:Trinity College Dublin (TCD)
Project Summary
The Chemistry Toolbox will empower early career researchers (MSc, PhD and Postdoc) to work with students, teachers, and others to co-create new activities which encourage two-way communication through guided inquiry-based investigations. The new Leaving Cert (LC) science specifications launch in Sept 2025 and seek to nurture students to become scientifically literate citizens and lifelong learners [4]. They also contain a new emphasis on investigations and student projects for the first time.
Early career researchers based at our host and regional supporting institutions are investigating all areas of STEM through a chemistry lens. The Chemistry Toolbox will empower our researchers to develop, pilot, evaluate and refine inquiry-based activities linked to the new LC chemistry specification and real-world applications [5]. Over the course of the Chemistry Toolbox programme, these activities and their delivery methods will be refined with an increasing number of schools coming on steam.
Researchers and teachers will work together to guide student participants through the investigations with an inquiry approach, leading to the establishment of a new framework for best practise and numerous long-term benefits for teachers, researchers and student participants. The Chemistry Toolbox will specifically target DEIS and rural schools, since these schools are less likely to offer chemistry for LC or partake in BTYSTE and SciFest [6]. Also, chemistry themed projects only make up a small percent at these competitions annually and are usually grouped with physics and maths.
Therefore, schools have less experience running chemistry research projects compared to life sciences, engineering and technology [7-8].