Process Skills Content-Unrelated Aspects of an Analytical Lab Course George F. Atkinson University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 361
A common characteristic of academic chemistrv curricula is a content-centered approach. The things done 6y working chemists in the non-academic world differ in the prominence of application of process skills as well as academic knowledge of chemistry. Various authors have attempted to focus on the less-content-related aspects of the knowledge and skills used by working chemists. Johnstone and Sharp1 offer a list of such items. Univenity programs are likely to address these matters only implicitly. Thoueh the laboratorv is sometimes criticized as a costlv and inekcient way of iliustrating cognitive points from the lectures, most chemists both in universities and in industry believe the analytical laboratory must equip students with certain manipulative skills and related self-confidence regarding measurement processes. We have attempted to use this course also to present aspects of what graduate chemists are doing in their daily activities. Students enter Year Two in our honors programs in chemistry from a first year in which the tacit assumption is that program choices are tentative. This tends to place a premium on a bumpless transition from high school and on not making any course too hard for those whose interest lies in another one. Apart from an English proficiency examination, process skills are emphasized to a very limited extent. Reality concerning the nature and demands of the major subject descends upon the student entering Year Two. In the first lecture of the analytical course, the notion of the overall analytical process and its part in chemical problem solving is introduced. Knowing about measurement processes is clearly only a part of this. In the lab. students are resented with several challenees related to things other than knowledge of content. The first is to organize a term's work effectively. In the Year One lab, experiments are arranged in asequence, and each is done on its successive dav. On com~letinethe dav's experiment, the student goes home. In contrast, the skondkear analvtical lab presents the student with a list of the term's work, and 3 ws;ning that complerion of an acceptshle amount ol' it will require the interwea\,ing of tasks from several e x pt.riments in each day's activity. Thc next chsllenm arisrs directly from rhe firsr. A careful diary-type notebook must he kep
