Over the past 20 years, the science education research community, including those working in chemistry, have begun to understand the nature of difficulties that students experience in learning science concepts and in solving scientific problems; have begun to understand how motivation is promoted or squelched by assessment; have begun to understand how attitudes are enhanced or undercut by instruction. Some of these efforts are seeping into everyday instruction, albeit slowly. This 2007 CERP meeting is intended to bring together investigators -- in chemistry predominantly, but also in physics, in biology, in mathematics, in technology, in cognition -- who have been working to a large extent in parallel within their own communities. We need to be learning from each other. We need to continue to develop avenues of investigation that eventually lead to instruction and curricula K-16 and beyond that help more students understand and appreciate chemical ideas better than they ever have before. Topics of discussion will include research and applications pertinent to:

• how students learn from visual representations and animations of molecular systems.
• how students explore a chemical problem space and what that indicates about their level of skill, their approach to problem solving, and their conceptual understanding.
• analysis of reasoning (use of analogy, causation, deduction) by expert scientists and novice science learners.
• study of the social interactions through which mathematical and scientific meaning is constructed and negotiated.
• development of tools to unpack student thinking processes and ideas, such as latent semantic analysis, cognitive expectation assessment, and functional MRI.
• how students learn in both virtual and real research environments.
• practices that hold promise for building motivation, understanding, and skill at various age levels.

Conference Philosophy, for New Attendees: The Gordon Conference format provides the opportunity for intense interaction among a small number of participants (about 130), and the opportunity to get to know each other well. Presentations are scheduled for mornings and evenings. Afternoons are unscheduled so that small groups can organize spontaneously to discuss a pressing issue or to share a field trip. Conference participants are strongly encouraged to be present for the entire conference. Furthermore, all discussions are informal and off-the-record. Presentations and posters may not be distributed in print nor cited.