Conference Report: New Perspectives in Science Education

Last week I attended the “New Perspectives in Science Education” meeting, held in Florence. I usually attend chemistry specific education conferences like the Variety in Chemistry Education meeting (now held with The Physicists), but I was interested in this meeting as it was bringing together educators from all scientific disciplines. While I was a little disappointed with the meeting - some speakers didn’t use their time allocation, some presented work without any consideration of evaluation, and some speakers didn’t show up! - there were some good talks as well, and I am always happy if you can come away from a meeting with some useful ideas and concepts. I’m happy to report that many of these came from the chemists, and I’ve given some brief summaries below.  There are corresponding papers for the talks, which have much more information and are available to view on the conference website at this link.