Improving student laboratory performance: How much practice makes perfect?

Beasley, Warren

doi:10.1002/sce.3730690412

Cited by 19 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…How well a student copes with procedural strategies is an indicator of the amount of time the student spends in the laboratory (Beasley, 1985), since familiarity with laboratory equipment translates to how well they will be able to manipulate the equipment to obtain the desired accuracy, the knowledge to repeat readings to ensure reproducibility of measurements, and the errors associated with different measurements.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Open-ended investigations: Performance and effects of pre-training

Toh¹,

Boo²,

Keng-Hoe-Yeo³

1997

Research in Science Education

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Students' performance and the effects of pre-trairting were studied for tasks rated high in ambiguity, in particular those where the solution to the tasks cannot be arrived at through predictable algorithms. A total of 277 thirteen-year-old students from two urban schools in Singapore were randomly assigned to two groups. One group was provided with instruction for dealing with such tasks in general before performing a series of tasks, while the other group performed the tasks without the instruction. How well the students coped with the ambiguities of the tasks with and without pretraining is reported in this paper.School tasks vary in intellectual demands. The emphasis of the early elementary grades on the basic skills is characterised by the three Rs of reading, writing and arithmetic (though the term mathematics has evolved to become fairly accepted even for elementary grades). This emphasis gradually shifts from basic skills to the content and methods of inquiry of the academic disciplines, as students progress through the grades. From around the 7th and 8th grade levels, when students increasingly operate in the formal operations mode, the school tasks become more demanding. They engage students in more abstract thinking as well as in the use of general strategies to analyse and solve problems. In short, there is a priority in society to ensure that individuals learn to handle abstract ideas (Doyle, 1983).The nature of the tasks affects information processing strategies invoked to carry out the task. Accomplishing a task requires students to acquire information about the task and to apply the appropriate operations necessary to complete the task. The former involves students in acquisition of information-the facts, concepts and principles. In the latter, students will need to apply some operations, such as memorising, classifying, inferring and analysing, to bring about the completion of the task. The more abstract a task is, the more crucial the choice of strategies for the completion of the task.A simple task such as adding a column of numbers or multiplying two-digit numbers, can be accomplished by using a standard routine. There is little unpredictability in such tasks as the routines or algorithms are very reliable. Such tasks can be accomplished without understanding; correct answers can be obtained by simply knowing how to follow a series of computational steps. Reading is another example of a simple task that can be carried out without the listener knowing for sure whether the reader understands what is being read. What one needs is a mere decoding of letter-sound correspondence for pronouncing words correctly.Being able to use an algorithm does not necessarily mean one understands why the algorithm works or when to use it. Similarly, understanding why an algorithm works or when it should be used does not necessarily lead to computational proficiency (Resnick & Ford, 1981). It is a myth that extensive drill and practice of computational procedures is a prerequisite for understanding. Drill a...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Open-ended investigations: Performance and effects of pre-training

Toh¹,

Boo²,

Keng-Hoe-Yeo³

1997

Research in Science Education

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“…Thereafter, the learners need to have opportunities to practice the skills required for a particular inquiry situation (Sund & Trowbridge, 1973). These 'controlled prelab' activities will reduce the probability that learners will take incorrect measurements using an apparatus (Beasley, 1985). In a study by Toh, Boo, and Yeo (1997) thirteen-year-old learners were explicitly taught the strategies in connection with planning, measurement, procedural and communication stages of open-ended laboratory tasks.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Shifting South African learners towards greater autonomy in scientific investigations

Ramnarain¹,

Hobden²

2014

Journal of Curriculum Studies

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This report describes how teachers support ninth-grade students who are doing scientific investigations in Natural Sciences in South African schools. This is of interest as allowing students to participate in inquiry-based investigations is a significant shift from traditional practices. It presents a new challenge to teachers as it signals an opportunity to shift from a teacher-centred to a student-centred approach in practical inquiry. The research study adopted a mixed methodology research design that involved the collection of both quantitative and qualitative data. The quantitative data were collected by means of questionnaires that were administered to 55 teachers. Qualitative data were collected by means of five classroom observations of student investigations and in-depth teacher interviews. The analysis of all the data revealed that teachers believe in providing support and not allowing learners to discover for themselves when participating in investigations. Teachers use a number of support strategies depending on the stage of the investigation. Based on these findings, a learning progression of teacher support for increasing learner autonomy was formulated which teachers can use in guiding them in the use of appropriate support strategies as they shift students towards greater autonomy in doing investigations.

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“…However, Beasley (1985) has shown that a combination of thinking and doing works even better in this regard, leading to significant improvements in students' ability to perform psychomotor laboratory tasks. The advantage of Beasley's method is, of course, that it is cheap in the demands it makes on the resources of time and equipment.…”

Section: Laboratory Workmentioning

confidence: 95%

Undergraduate Science Education: A Review of Research

Laws

1996

Studies in Science Education

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Improving student laboratory performance: How much practice makes perfect?

Cited by 19 publications

References 7 publications

Open-ended investigations: Performance and effects of pre-training

Open-ended investigations: Performance and effects of pre-training

Shifting South African learners towards greater autonomy in scientific investigations

Undergraduate Science Education: A Review of Research

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