There are multiple types and communities of chemistry educators. Some of us are excellent teachers. Some of us are excellent educational researchers. Some of us are excellent providers of public outreach. Some of us teach in high schools, some in community colleges, some at universities (at both the undergraduate and graduate levels), and some in more informal venues like homes and museums. Each of us brings value to our understanding of how chemistry is taught and learned, and we can ALL learn from each other.

This symposium is jointly sponsored by the Two-Year College Chemistry Consortium (2YC3), the American Association for Chemistry Teachers (AACT), the Chemistry Education Research Committee from the ACS Division of Chemical Education, and the American Chemical Society Committee on Education communities as an attempt to allow chemistry educators at all levels to learn from each other. There are many different instructional practices we can use to help our students learn chemistry. The most effective of these practices are supported by classroom- and/or research-based evidence. This symposium is meant to be a place for sharing those evidence-based practices: both the research that explains why they work and how to implement them in our classrooms. Presenters from high schools, community colleges, and universities will discuss, for example, how they use these techniques in their classrooms, ways to modify the techniques to meet the needs of learners from diverse backgrounds and with diverse abilities, ways to assess the impact of these techniques on student learning, or educational research supporting the use of the techniques. The inaugural sessions of this symposium will focus on two specific evidence-based instructional practices that allow students to engage directly in constructing their understanding of chemistry content: flipped classrooms and inquiry-based teaching strategies.