Can the Detection of Professorial Errors Stimulate Students' Critical Awareness? One of the major points of divergence between the teaching of chemistry and its practice is in the area of "criticism." Most professional chemists find it easy to he extremely critical when reading journals, attending meetings, or listening to their students or assistants. The usual methods of undergraduate instruction, texts, and lectures which are considered by both student sud professor to be error-free, seem counterproductive for generating such a, critical enthusiasm. We decided to try to reverse this process by training introductory chemistry students to be scientifically critical while using a limited training time. The experiment was conducted at the beginning of the laboratory period of the second semester of a general chemistry course (enrollment = 762). Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday classes constituted the experimental group (449 students); Monday and Friday, the control (172 students). The experimental group was asked to determine the errors in a. short (-5 min) videotaped lecture. After viewing the error tape (sometimes two viewings) the students gathered &bout their laboratory assistant (ratio: -12: 1) and each small group discussed the presumed errors. Then a second section of the videotape was shown in which the errors were discussed and a non-erroneous solution to the lecture was developed. The total time spent on this project in one session was about 30 min. The control group spent the same amount of time a t the beginning of their period by having the laboratory assistant lecture a problem solution on the same material, while discouraging student participation. At the end of the third weekly session the experimental group was given a questionnaire (e.g., "Do you consider yourself more critical?") and was told that the experiment was complete. This was, of course, a lie; the following week, the senior demonstrator included two errors (changed every day) in her prelab lecture presentation to both control and experimental groups. The students were immediately given an objective questionnaire to determine their awareness ("Was it your first impression that the lecture was correct?"), aswell as their ability to determine the particular errors. We also distinguished between students who were "sure" of the errors or just "suspicious" about them. There is no statistical difference between experimental and control groups (even when compared at letter-grade levels) on any part of the second (objective) questionnaire. Indeed, almost four-fifthsof the students accepted major errors, which if included in a formal examination would be detected, in our estimation based on previous examinations, by more than 60% of the students. We conclude, of course, that our training program failed. Several possible reasons (rationalizations) come to mind: invalid training method (including objections to TV instruction); insufficient training period; improper course level; inaccurate testing methods (including objections to change of media. between training program and test, and the suggestion that the laboratory "test" lecture was a low-attention situation); and the "non-trainable" nature of critical ability. V%rionstests of these explapations (except the lest) are apparent and may be tried. But the most important result of this experiment is, we feel, the astonishing fact that SOYc of our students complacently accepted whet they "knew" to be chemical falsehoods.
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Supported by a grant from the Educational Development Fund, McGill University. Present address: Concordia College, Milwaukee, Wis. ARTWRE. GROSSER THEODORE WAECH'
MCGILLUNIVERSITY MONTREAL. CANADA
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Journol of Chemical Education
