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Abstract
The justification advanced by teachers and curriculum developers for investing so much time, energy and resources in laboratory work in school science courses almost invariably includes the claim that it provides students with insight into, and experience and practice of, the methods of science. This paper traces the changing nature of laboratory work from the 1960s to the present, from discovery learning to process-led science to contemporary constructivist approaches, and argues that each of these styles of laboratory work has seriously misrepresented and distorted the nature of scientific inquiry. Some suggestions are made for the re-orientation of laboratory work to ensure that it projects an image of science that more faithfully reflects actual scientific practice.
Laboratory work as scientific method: three decades of confusion and distortion
Derek Hodson
Journal of Curriculum Studies,
Volume 28, Issue 2 March 1996
pages 115 - 135
...from discovery learning to process-led science to contemporary constructivist approaches...
Those babies belong in the Museum of Educational Fads.
3 comments:
This reminds me of a running argument I've had about the purpose of labs in first-year college chemistry. I actually don't think its' purpose is to introduce the scientific method, but to illustrate what we're learning about in lecture. For example, gas laws are often really hard for students to grasp, but when we introduced a lab where they observed the pressure of air while changing the volume and temperature, the topic suddenly became very easy for them. Similarly, this year, we added a lab on solubility (dissolving polar and non-polar compounds in polar and non-polar solvents), and old confusions were much reduced. The response from students is very positive -- they like feeling that lab and lecture are related, which is often a new idea to them!
Typically, high school chemistry is one of the worst science experiences students have (or so my students tell me), and I wonder how much of that is labs that are supposed to engage students but which are too removed from the more abstract information they're learning in class.
I actually don't think its' purpose is to introduce the scientific method, but to illustrate what we're learning about in lecture.
right!
That's what it was in high school - and in the chemistry course I took at Wellesley.
Lab was entirely "hands-on" learning; it was an illustration of what we were learning in class.
There was really nothing "experimental" about it, although I think in high school we wrote up what we did & found....nonetheless, I'm pretty sure we knew what we were supposed to find to begin with.
I liked labs, but there was no pretense that we were "little scientists."
I do think it's correct to say that we were getting a sense of what it is to be a "bench scientist" -- or to be the grad student assistant in a real scientist's lab!
We were doing the grunt work.
For example, gas laws are often really hard for students to grasp, but when we introduced a lab where they observed the pressure of air while changing the volume and temperature, the topic suddenly became very easy for them.
Exactly.
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