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Over the past 20 years research on reform efforts aimed at the chemistry laboratory has focused on different aspects of students’ experiences including increasing content knowledge, improving student attitudes toward chemistry, incorporating inquiry activities, and providing students a hands-on experience related to the chemistry concepts learned in lecture. While many of these efforts have been designed to incorporate inquiry activities, because this term is somewhat nebulous, it can be difficult to identify which aspects of the laboratory support inquiry. The Scientific and Engineering Practices outlined in the Framework for K–12 Science Education provide a new way to identify and characterize laboratory activities more precisely. This work compares two laboratory curricula in terms of the extent to which the curricula as a whole provide opportunities for students to engage in scientific practices and characterizes in which sections of a laboratory activity (prelab/procedure, data manipulation/analysis, conclusions/report out) students most frequently engage specific scientific practices. Further, this study demonstrates how a modified version of a published protocol for evaluating incorporation of science practices into assessment items (the 3-Dimensional Learning Assessment Protocol) can be used to evaluate laboratory activities in a systematic way. Ways in which such an analysis can inform and support the revision of laboratory curricula are also discussed.

[structure: see text] A highly convergent synthesis of the proposed structure of amphidinolide A is reported. Instructive applications of several organometallic processes are illustrated, including a highly selective ring-closing metathesis reaction.

One of the most mystifying products on the market for people at any age is the glow stick: a plastic tube that, when snapped, creates a flood of bright, brilliantly colored light without the use of electricity or significant production of heat. In this case, the chemiluminescence reaction also provides an exciting phenomenon through which we can engage students in the Scientific and Engineering Practices. This laboratory project has been developed both to pique students’ interest about the task at hand and to have them practice science in a more authentic way than a traditional “cookbook” experiment. In completing this project, students will not only gain an understanding of the factors affecting the rate of the chemiluminescence reaction but also be able to create their own procedures, analyze and interpret their data, and construct an evidence-based argument from their results.

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