Identity Development in Chemistry: The Social Functionality and Moral Significance of Being (Considered) a "Real" Chemist.

Abstract

As chemistry expands across interdisciplinary boundaries and diverse career sectors, examining how professional identity is constructed becomes crucial for understanding field dynamics and career development patterns. This study investigates how individuals at various levels of education and professional careers in chemistry define and describe chemistry identity. Using semistructured interviews with undergraduate students and chemistry professionals across academic, industry, and government job sectors, we investigated the ways participants (N = 43) described and characterized a chemist or a "chemistry person," including how this characterization influenced self-identification and evaluation of others in the field. Drawing on Social Identity Theory, our analysis reveals that there is a notion of a "true" or more "legitimate" chemist within the community based on a "pure chemist" stereotype, which is characterized by having a chemistry degree, conducting research in academia, and doing molecular-level work. In practice, this means that there are groups within the community excluded, including biochemists, chemical engineers, chemistry education researchers, and chemists in industry, based on ideals of "academic purity" that privilege and reserve rigor only to certain chemistry subdisciplines and job sectors. The results indicate a basic tension between the characterization of chemistry as the "central science," and the increasingly bounded identity practices that limit impositions of interdisciplinary views. Deeper examination of our data reflects how chemistry identity is constructed within practices of morality that place "pure" chemistry at the top, while systematically marginalizing those who work across disciplinary lines. These exclusionary practices continue, as they are framed to be maintaining scientific integrity, and not bias, making them difficult to challenge while also creating sustained problems for diversity and retention in the field.