3. SCIENCE LABORATORY:
A Form of Instruction
• group or individual
activity
• carefully designed
guided inquiry
questions
– often executed in a
laboratory room
4. What Does It Offers?
• Students will be able to:
– Collect data through interaction
– Use typical laboratory materials
– Use data simulation tools
– Engage in decision making
environment,
– Reflect upon observation
• discovery-based learning.
5. What Does It Offers?
• To teachers:
– facilitators
– ask leading questions
– draw attention to interesting details
6. What’s So Special About Teaching Labs?
• Labs are often the best or only source of
INTERACTION for the students
– Interaction with an instructor
– with other students
– with the subject material itself
– with their prior knowledge and ideas about a
topic.
• Labs/recitations are about actually
DOING SCIENCE (or the inquiry activities of your
field), not listening to someone talk about it.
9. Why Use Science Laboratory
Experimentation?
• to introduce new ideas
• to clarify puzzling aspects of
topics with which students typically
struggle.
10. Why Use Science Laboratory
Experimentation?
• result of an experiment is
surprising (convincing) ownership
11. Why Use Science Laboratory
Experimentation?
• Conceptual focus another concept for
application.
12. Science Learners…
• Are engaged by scientifically oriented questions.
• Give priority to evidence which allows them to
develop and evaluate explanations that address
scientifically oriented questions.
• Formulate explanations from evidence.
• Evaluate their explanations in light of alternative
explanations, especially those reflecting scientific
understanding; and
• Communicate and justify their proposed
explanation.
15. FOUR PARTS OF EFFECTIVE TEACHING
• Provide Context: Why should anyone care or
How do you learn best?
• Draw out students’ Prior Knowledge and
(mis?)conceptions on topic
– Ask them to predict will happen in a given
situation and WHY they think that (think,
predict, write, pair, share)
• Model Authentic Practice
• Make Meaning from activity (or else it is busy
work)
– What were the Actual Results?
– How does that connect back to the purpose of
the activity? What do the Results Mean?
18. LEARNING IN LAB
• Know exactly what the students are
supposed to learn and why they have
to learn these things.
• Perform the entire experiment in
advance.
• Read and study the theory on which
the experiment(s) are based.
• Research the relevance of the
experiment, both the technique being
taught and the applications of the
theory being demonstrated.
19. LEARNING IN LAB
• Talk to instructors who will often have
very useful tips about experiments
you are performing.
• Decide how to introduce new method
to make the lab exercise most
effective.
• Guide students in preparing their lab
reports by using experimental data
and help them in data analysis and
interpretations of results.
20. Assessment & Learning Outcomes
OUTCOMES
Manipulate apparatus and instruments
Perform routine techniques
Collect and process data
Interpret data after the experiment
Communicate findings in the form of a report
21. OUTCOMES
Solve problems through experimentation
Design an experiment to test a hypothesis
Effectively work as part of a group to address a
large problem
Consider safety aspects of laboratory work
Disseminate findings in an appropriate manner to a
variety of audience types
Assessment & Learning Outcomes
22. How do your labs “rate?”
Inquiry Rating ScaleInquiry Rating Scale
23. Most people learn best in a concrete manner involving
personal participation, physical or hands-on activities,
and opportunities for personal discovery.
25. Challenges
• The notion that, “It might go wrong.”
• Students might not follow directions
• materials might get confused
• people follow the wrong steps
• internet service may go down
26. • risk of too many participants being
involved
• potential shortage of time, resources and
facility space
• teacher cannot assist all students
Challenges
27. • No materials available
• No laboratory area
Challenges
28. To answer the challenges…
• Improvised
• Prepare back-up plan or alternative plan
• Perform the experiment in advance
• Research in advance the same activity
and compare results.
• Check the time schedule
31. References
• Ball, Sheryl et.al. 2013. What are Classroom Experiments?SERC
Pedagogic Service Project
http://serc.carleton.edu/sp/library/experiments/index.html retrieved Jan 20,
2017
• Loughran, Berry, & Mulhall.2012.Understanding and Developing Science
Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge. Professional Learnings. Sense
Publishers, USA
• Seery, Michael 2010. Teaching in the Laboratory: 1 – Pedagogy.
http://michaelseery.com/home/index.php/2010/09/teaching-in-the-
laboratory-1-pedagogy/ Retrieved Jan. 20, 2017