Chemical Education Today
Book & Media Reviews
Teaching and Learning in the Science Laboratory (Science & Technology Education Library, Vol. 16) edited by Hans Niedderer and Dimitris Psillos Kluwer Academic Publishers: Dordrecht, The Netherlands, 2002. 267 pp. ISBN 1402010184. $96 reviewed by Thomas H. Eberlein
What are the goals of laboratory instruction? Does laboratory instruction, as currently practiced, meet these goals? When it does not, what can we do to fix the problem? How can we identify the problems? These are among the important questions asked, and to some extent answered, in Teaching and Learning in the Science Laboratory. The book is a collection of papers based on studies by noted researchers in the field of science education. These studies were conducted as part of the European project “Labwork in Science Education”. According to the editors, “It is a shared assumption of the contributors that research-based labwork may be gradually developed out of specific policy recommendations linked to research outcomes.” This is certainly a laudable goal, and the book makes progress toward achieving it. The 19 essays are segregated into five chapters. Papers in Chapter 1, Approaching Labwork: Frames and Tools, provide systematic methods for defining, describing, and analyzing different labwork tasks. Chapter 2, Standard Labwork Based on Hands-On Experiments, addresses students’ perceptions of the intended learning experiences in a laboratory and knowledge they use in carrying out lab experiments. Chapter 3, Open-Ended Labwork, describes the use of nontraditional labs to develop students’ understanding of scientific epistemology—including how and when to use specific procedures, and choices one might make in interpreting the data gathered. The goal is to increase student autonomy, and to help students develop a more sophisticated understanding of how science works. Chapter 4, Labwork and Data Handling, segues smoothly from Chapter 3 by offering two quite different illustrations of data treatment and drawing conclusions from those data, which is often impeded by students’ misconceptions about measurement errors. In each case the authors’ aim is to “teach students about the nature and functioning of science itself, and to equip students to conduct laboratory investigations where they have to make decisions about data collection, data analysis, and data interpretation.” The final chapter, Labwork Based on Integrated Use of New Information Technology, explores many of the possibilities— data acquisition, real-time graphing for immediate analysis of results, simulations, and modeling theoretical results—for integrating computer technologies into science teaching. Using computers in labwork is seen as a means for linking theory with practice and for getting students to think about the ideas behind what they are doing, as they are doing it. www.JCE.DivCHED.org
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The structure of the essays is uniform. The authors explain the scope and limitation of the problem under investigation, define their research question(s), describe their methods, and present their results. Most essays end with conclusions and recommendations, a useful feature for those who want to know what they should do, based on the authors’ results. Although the subject matter rarely deals with chemistry per se, that hardly matters: When an essay embodies a compact, workable idea, adapting it for a chemistry context should be straightforward. Some of the essays were beautifully written and told compelling stories where the message was clear, valuable, and relevant. But there were also problems, including uneven translations. I am reminded of what my freshman composition teacher said in describing why he took points off for grammatical errors: “Reading has a certain ‘flow’ to it. Anything that disrupts the flow compromises the reader’s ability to understand your writing.” Many of the translations contain grammatical errors, bizarre word choices, or similar flowdisrupters. The problem is never so severe as to make an essay impenetrable, but the flow of the reading is interrupted occasionally. Another minor inconvenience is that many authors assumed too much familiarity on the part of the reader with the important concepts from the specific area under investigation. You don’t know the difference between Bayesian probability and frequentism? You’re going to have to look it up. There are golden nuggets in this book, but the reader should be prepared: sometimes the mining is tough. Two major themes recurred throughout the book. These deal with central questions regarding the essential purpose of labwork: • Several authors stated that laboratory instruction should help students link the “world of objects and events” with the “world of models and theories”. This often-repeated goal bears a notable resemblance to the chemist’s objective to help students link the macroscopic, particulate, and symbolic worlds (1, 2). But is it truly practical or realistic to expect labwork to help students learn scientific concepts, or is the laboratory just for building technical expertise? • Authors distinguished between two types of “effectiveness” of labwork, and investigated how specific learning contexts could promote one or both of these types. Effectiveness 1 pertains to students’ actions in the laboratory. Did they do what we intended them to do? Effectiveness 2 relates to the instructional objectives after the labwork is complete. Did students learn what they were intended to learn? Uniting these two types of effectiveness, various authors addressed the question of how we can get our students to use their understanding of theory to intervene in laboratory practice. That is, how can we help students avoid “siloing” knowledge gained elsewhere that could have been put to use in their laboratory decision-making processes?
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Chemical Education Today edited by
Jeffrey Kovac University of Tennessee Knoxville, TN 37996-1600
There are no clear-cut answers to these questions, nor should we expect facile solutions. Many authors point out that different contexts call for different approaches. Someone wishing to enhance the effectiveness of his or her laboratory instruction would do well to be armed with a familiarity of the techniques employed by the authors in this volume. Their in-depth studies can help labwork developers avoid a trial-and-error approach in modifying laboratory instruction. The editors state, “We expect the book will appeal to a wider public than researchers and postgraduate students… supply[ing] valuable information to policy makers, teacher trainers and science teachers.” Notwithstanding its potential utility to members of these groups, I am skeptical about most
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people reading this book in its entirety. A more likely outcome would be for the book to find its way into the collection of an academic library, where it could be used for reference as needed by those interested in a particular technique or result. Literature Cited 1. Gabel, D. J. Chem. Educ. 1999, 76, 548–554. 2. Johnstone, A. H. J. Comp. Assist. Learn. 1991, 7, 701–703.
Thomas H. Eberlein is in the School of Science, Engineering, and Technology, Penn State Schuylkill, The Capital College, Schuylkill Haven, PA 17972;
[email protected].
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