Chemical Education is quite a young scientific discipline. It is conducted in an academic field between educational sciences and chemistry. Its primary location between these very different disciplines is controversial. The aims and methods range from empirical research on learning processes using the classical methods of social sciences to the opening of new aspects of chemistry for education with experimental methods from natural sciences. Thus Chemical Education is repeatedly driven to legitimise itself as an independent scientific discipline. This includes a debate on its understanding of 'research'. The 16^th Symposium on Chemical Education in Dortmund therefor focused on the question: "Research in Chemical Education - What does it mean?" from different perspectives.

Projected were contributions on:
- the perspective of research in chemical education from the view of general educational sciences
- the situation and perspectives of empirical research
- the methodological funding of approaches in curriculum development
- the needs of practice and its requests on chemical education research
- the discussion of concrete projects in chemical education research