ERIC Number: EJ1444295
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2024-Oct
Pages: 12
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0021-9584
EISSN: EISSN-1938-1328
Laboratory Safety Teams as an Evolving Community of Practice: Exploring the How and Why
Journal of Chemical Education, v101 n10 p4124-4135 2024
Reports of laboratory damage, personal injury, and death have triggered increasing concern over the academic safety culture and the safety education of those pursuing studies in the chemical sciences. Student-led laboratory safety teams (LSTs) within academic institutions serve as a new and expanding informal, bottom-up approach to improving the academic safety culture and safety education of student researchers. Since 2018, a workshop has been run by the American Chemical Society Division of Chemical Health and Safety to support graduate students in the chemical sciences in establishing and growing LSTs of their own. Here, we examine how LSTs within the different academic institutions have evolved into a community of practice (CoP) through these workshops and why the members have engaged in growing this CoP. We determine the current stage of the LST CoP and what values the members created and experienced through the evaluation of artifacts from 14 workshops conducted from 2018 to 2022, semistructured interviews with student researchers running the workshops, and a guided focus group interview with the three primary student leaders of the workshops. We are sharing this analysis with the chemical education community to provide others with insights into experimental ways to improve the safety education of those pursuing studies in the chemical sciences.
Descriptors: Communities of Practice, Safety Education, Student Research, Chemistry, Science Instruction, Laboratory Safety, Graduate Students, Teamwork, Student Attitudes, Values, Student Experience
Division of Chemical Education, Inc. and ACS Publications Division of the American Chemical Society. 1155 Sixteenth Street NW, Washington, DC 20036. Tel: 800-227-5558; Tel: 202-872-4600; e-mail: eic@jce.acs.org; Web site: http://pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A