First‐year chemistry practicals at universities in England and Wales: aims and the scientific level of the experiments

Characterizing the Experimental Procedure in Science Laboratories: A preliminary step towards students experimental design

“…According to Gomes, Borges, and Justi (2008), it is important that students know the aim of an experiment before doing it. For this purpose, first-year chemistry practical manuals from 17 universities in England and Wales were analysed (Meester & Maskill, 1995). They found that the aims of experiments were mostly hidden in the introductory sessions of the experimental descriptions and that students often had to work hard to discover them.…”

The use of an intervention programme to improve undergraduatestudents' chemical knowledge and address their misconceptions

“…For the most part, they follow carefully the steps outlined in their laboratory manuals but cannot see the relevance of purpose of what they are doing. They also mentioned major difficulty during the write-up of the practical activities, as they do not know what they were looking for or supposed to be calculating (Meester and Maskil, 1995;Reid and Shah, 2007). Domin (2007) investigated two approaches to laboratory teaching, the traditional method of following 'cookbook' recipe style procedures to achieve a pre-determined result, the other being a non-traditional student-centered approach.…”

Assessing pre‐university students through extended individual investigations: teachers’ and examiners’ views

“…However, perhaps the most fundamental concern over continuity is implied indirectly by the findings of the study: what happens in the transition from preuniversity to university courses? A study of practical work undertaken in firstyear chemistry courses in England and Wales (Meester and Maskill 1995) indicates that almost without exception practical tasks are closed and structured, aiming at verifying a law or practising a technique. This pattern appears to continue well into the second year of the course, while many of the more advanced competences developed and assessed in pre-university courses are not practised and further refined until the final-year undergraduate project.…”