Faculty perspectives of the undergraduate chemistry laboratory were the focus of a study to articulate the goals, strategies, and assessments used in undergraduate teaching laboratories. Data were collected via semistructured interviews with faculty (N = 22) from community colleges, liberal arts colleges, comprehensive universities, and research institutions engaged in teaching or supervising undergraduate laboratories. The goals for general chemistry, organic chemistry, and upper-division laboratories are described and compared among faculty who have received NSF-CCLI (now called NSF-TUES) grants to implement changes in laboratory and those who have not. Problems and limitations to success in laboratory are also reported, and the impact of these obstacles on student achievement and laboratory curricula is discussed.
Forty chemistry faculty from American Chemical Society-approved
departments were interviewed to determine their goals for undergraduate
chemistry laboratory. Faculty were stratified by type of institution,
departmental success with regard to National Science Foundation funding
for laboratory reform, and level of laboratory course. Interview transcripts
that were coded and analyzed using the lens of meaningful learning
reveal the importance of cognitive and psychomotor goals relative
to affective learning, particularly in organic chemistry and upper-division
chemistry laboratory courses. This research reveals that the undergraduate
chemistry laboratory offers multiple opportunities for faculty to
articulate learning goals across the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor
domains. Furthermore, these goals are accessible across the undergraduate
chemistry curriculum from general chemistry through organic chemistry
and into a wide array of upper-division laboratories. In this study,
faculty showed a decreasing emphasis on affective goals in organic
chemistry and upper-division courses. Whether affective goals should
be a part of the organic and upper-division chemistry curriculum remains
a question for faculty to discuss.
Inquiry has been defined as "a pedagogical method that combines hands-on activities with student-centered discussion and discovery of concepts" (1), and national criteria describe inquiry-based instruction as a crucial technique for teaching science, especially in the laboratory (2-4). French and Russell (5) write Inquiry-based instruction places more emphasis on the students as scientists. It places the responsibility on the students to pose hypotheses, design experiments, make predictions, choose the independent and dependent variables, decide how to analyze the results, identify underlying assumptions, and so on. Students are expected to communicate their results and support their own conclusions with the data they collected.
Solubility is challenging for many general chemistry students, and the interactions of aqueous species are difficult to conceptualize. Derived from the pedagogies of Johnstone, Bloom, and Piaget, our primary research questions probe whether students’ conceptual understandings of solubility could be enhanced by participation in a concept-building, hands-on activity involving manipulatives; whether algorithmic abilities could be strengthened by completion of an equation-writing activity; and whether a multilevel laboratory activity increases students’ ability to transition through Johnstone’s triangle of chemical representations. A control group completed a traditional solubility wet laboratory, while a treatment group laboratory included teacher demonstrations, concept-building, hands-on activities, and a modified version of the traditional laboratory procedure. Pre- and posttests were administered to both groups, and qualitative data were collected from questions answered at the treatment group stations. We observed that treatment group participants, given opportunities to develop submicroscopic conceptual understandings, made gains allowing them to out-perform control group participants in microscopic and macroscopic representations. Analysis of qualitative data produced four main assertions about the way general chemistry students learn solubility. Our findings encourage us to rethink the traditional role of laboratory, which does not focus on conceptual development but rather on development of manipulative skills.
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