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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