The role of interpretation in inferring student knowledge and understanding from research data

Abstract

Recently CERP published its first articles in the categories of Comments and Replies. These are peer reviewed articles that address specific issues raised in articles published in the journal. A Comment is an article by new authors who argue that something in a published article should not stand in the literature without further comment, and a Reply is a response by the original authors to the Comment. The option of publishing articles of this kind is common among research journals, such as those published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. CERP is not seeking to actively encourage readers to submit comments on the papers they read in the journal as a matter of course, but rather is offering the possibility of challenging assertions made in published articles where readers strongly feel that there is some form of misrepresentation or limitation in an article that should be pointed out to the chemistry education community. These types of article raise issues about the definitiveness of research contributions, the status of knowledge claims made in published papers, and the conversational nature of the research literature in general.