Growing up in Calabasas, California, Meng-Yang Matthew Wu received a BS in Biochemistry at the University of California Los Angeles in 2013. By 2016, he obtained his MS in Chemistry from the University of California San Diego. There, he developed a passion for teaching chemistry while working as a Senior Teaching Assistant for Dr. Sandrine Berniolles. Simultaneously, he began his induction into the chemistry education research community, collaborating with Dr. Thomas Bussey to investigate the features of a voltaic cell representation to which students would attend using the Three Phase Single Interview Technique and an eye tracker. Eventually, he obtained his PhD from Purdue University in 2020. He had worked with Dr. Minjung Ryu to understand pre-service teachers’ experiences and graduate students’ communities of practice. Specifically, he developed and established a conceptual framework that leverages good game design principles to understand the affordances of productive failure within the instructional laboratory.

As a postdoctoral researcher at Miami University, he worked with Dr. Ellen Yezierski and Dr. Roy Tasker on the VisChem Institute, an intensive summer professional development program for in-service high school chemistry teachers. Together, they have contributed new insights on reimagining on chemistry lesson planning, pedagogical conceptual change, teacher-teacher feedback, ontologies of teacher artifacts, and the historicity of chemistry pedagogy. In 2022, Dr. Wu was also selected to be a CADRE Fellow.

Currently, Dr. Wu is interested in understanding chemistry graduate teaching assistants and how enacted pedagogy can fulfill excellence and effectiveness in chemistry learning. He endeavors to re-purpose the utility of chemistry knowledge for greater sensemaking and world readiness so that both educators and learners can better navigate the complexities of today’s society.

Research Overview

The Wu Research Group endeavors to investigate, theorize, and develop teaching practices that maximize both chemistry conceptual understanding and research practices. We are interested in identifying both cognitive and social assets that educators and learners bring into the classroom context. We seek to understand how to facilitate cutting-edge epistemologies so that chemistry knowledge can be connected to the multilayered fabric of everyday life. We also aim to adjust and reform both curricular and professional design principles so that students, graduate teaching assistants, and instructional chemistry stakeholders can all benefit. Our research effort will primarily be qualitative, leveraging video research principles, interviews, and ethnography. We will use educational philosophies and ascertain ways of importing them into chemistry education research to improve the novelty and relevance of our work.

Publications

Miller, C., Wu, M.-Y. M. (2025). Signals from Staff Notes: Investigating Diachronous Messages for Being a Laboratory Teaching Assistant. Journal of Chemical Education. DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.4c01210 

Wu, M.-Y. M., & Rodriguez, J. M. G. (2024). “Navigating and Applying Epistemic Integrity” as the Missing Science Practice: Re-envisioning Ethics for Both Undergraduate Chemistry Students and Instructors. Journal of Chemical Education, 101(8), 3135-3145. DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.4c00064 

Wu, M. Y. M., & Yezierski, E. J. (2023). Investigating the mangle of teaching oxidation-reduction with the VisChem approach: problematizing symbolic traditions that undermine chemistry concept development. Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 24(3), 807-827, DOI: 10.1039/D2RP00321J. 

Wu, M. Y. M., & Yezierski, E. J. (2023). Secondary Chemistry Teacher Learning: Precursors for and Mechanisms of Pedagogical Conceptual Change. Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 24(1), 245-262. DOI: 10.1039/D2RP00160H. 

Wu, M. Y. M., & Yezierski, E. J. (2022). Exploring Adaptations of the VisChem Approach: Advancements and Anchors toward Particle-Level Explanations. Journal of Chemical Education, 99(3), 1313-1325. DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.1c01275 

Wu, M. Y. M., & Yezierski, E. J. (2022). Pedagogical chemistry sensemaking: A novel conceptual framework to facilitate pedagogical sensemaking in model-based lesson planning. Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 23(2), 287-299. DOI: 10.1039/D1RP00282A 

Wu, M. Y. M., Magnone, K.M., Tasker, R., & Yezierski, E. J. (2021). Remote Chemistry Teacher Professional Development Delivery: Enduring Lessons for Programmatic Redesign. Journal of Chemical Education, 98(8), 2518-2526. DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.1c00181 

Ryu, M., Nardo, J. E., & Wu, M. Y. M. (2018). An examination of preservice elementary teachers’ representations about chemistry in an intertextuality- and modeling-based course. Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 19, 681-693. DOI: 10.1039/C7RP00150A