Conditions for Experimental Activities at Elementary and High Schools from Chemistry Teachers’ Point of View

Abstract

School experiments represent a necessary means of subject-matter presentation in chemistry education and are important for chemical (scientific) thinking. Despite being a focus of several texts, a complex view on the experimental activity in chemistry education in Czechia is missing. The results of a questionnaire survey among 466 lower-secondary, lyceum and grammar school teachers focused on types of conducted experiments, their frequency, the place they are conducted. The most frequently used chemicals and sources of inspiration are presented in the paper. The results show that despite experiments’ significant role in education, its occurrence is rather seldom and teacher’s demonstrations prevail over students’ experiments. The list of the most often used chemicals suggests the experiments are mostly focused on inorganic chemistry. These results open further questions regarding occupational safety at schools as an important factor which could also be the reason for such a low representation of experiments in Czech chemistry education.

Opportunities for Learning: Analysis of Czech Lower-Secondary Chemistry Textbook Tasks

“…51 Yet, as far as laboratory activities are concerned, despite textbooks being found to contain a high share of experimental tasks, such activities are only seldom. 43 Due ZCH, PCH and NŠ's focus on identical topics, the lower proportion (although the absolute number is still high) of the laboratory tasks in the textbook NŠ seems to reflect a school practice more. The fact this textbook is most preferred by majority of Czech teachers 5 indicates a shift in thinking about didactic transformation in chemistry education.…”

“…laboratory activities performed by students. 34 This explains Rusek et al 's findings 43 about demonstrations predominating all chemistry experimental activities in chemistry lessons in Czechia. Moreover, in this particular respect, there seems to be a contradiction between textbook content and teachers' actions.…”

“…Other textbooks include theoretical tasks (tasks related to laboratory activities: FR -41%, NŠ -17%, nFR -33%) as a reaction to more safety restrictions as well as plausible usefulness. 43 In all the analysed textbooks, the presence of task banks was found. However, their classification in relation to the content of the chapters varies.…”

Pre-Service Chemistry Teachers’ Professional Vision Development: The Effect of Lesson-Observation Practice

“…Increase of the IUs was recorded especially in relation to science specific area -experiments. In the light of recent research (Rusek et al, 2020), such situations are rare in chemistry lessons. For this reason, chemistry content noticing needs to be explicitly emphasized to the PSTs.…”

Design and Validation of a Virtual Chemical Laboratory—An Example of Natural Science in Elementary Education

“…In addition to learning fundamental knowledge in the classroom, experimental operation is also a critical part of the chemistry curriculum. In [7], by Rusek et al, the findings of a questionnaire survey targeting 466 Czechoslovak primary school teachers showed that experiments play a pivotal role in education; however, in actuality, the proportion of teachers implementing the experimental curriculum remained low. Wieman [8] advocated for maintaining enthusiasm for experimental curriculum activities and practicing the acquired knowledge through the process of experiments.…”