science course
Few educators or curriculum planners appear to challenge the assumption that science courses must include a substantial amount of laboratory work.
The near-universal presumption of science teachers at secondary and tertiary levels is that the huge time and energy investment, and the expense of offering specialized laboratory facilities, equipment, and consumable materials, are worth it. While the roots of such assumptions date back to the efforts of H.E. Armstrong, or earlier Layton, the modern fascination with practical work originates in the science curriculum ‘revolution’ of the 1960s and early 1970s.
The prominence given to practical work at that time was such that the NSTA could state that ‘the time is surely past when teachers must plead the case for school laboratories’. It must be confessed, however, that the argument for the widespread provision of laboratory work was made very much based on Strong ‘professional feelings’ concerning its worth rather than empirical research evidence about its effectiveness.
As a result of these assumptions, much recent science course curriculum practice, particularly involving practical work, is ill-thought-out, confused, and of limited educational benefit.
This article is not advocating the removal of practical work from the curriculum, but a fundamental rethinking of existing practice, founded on a critical reassessment of the roles of practical work, laboratory work, and experiments in science education. So far, these three terms have been applied rather loosely – a conscious attempt to convey the lack of clarity brought about in science curriculum discussion due to the inability to see that not all practical work is done in a laboratory and that not all laboratory work consists of experiments. Experiments in science, science teaching, online courses, laboratory work, geology, and cosmology, which have to do with occurrences remote and inaccessible in space and time, use little or no experiments.
Hypotheses in meteorology can be proved or disproved. By unforced observations.
In certain branches of medicine, experiments are not feasible or are undesirable on ethical grounds. The power that results from close science course control is also the major weakness of the experimental method and a potential trap for the unwary. Experiments are conducted within a particular theoretical matrix, which governs scientists’ perceptions of the problem, determines the experimental design, influences the interpretation of results, and so on. Theories determine which experiments are regarded as legitimate and how they are to be conducted.
For instance, when collecting data to test a hypothesis, the structure of the hypothesis and the character and the manner of data collection are predetermined by the very theory under examination. In other words, there can be no theory-independent experiments. A further common myth is that scientists can determine disputes once and for all and arrive at ‘truth’ through critical experiments. Most school science curricula convey the impression that a hypothesis can be refuted and, by implication, that another can be accepted based on evidence from a straightforward experimental test.
Several curricula imply that experiments have no other purpose in science courses. This sort of naïve reading of the Popperian concept of the falseness of Icarianism is associated with an assumption that theory-independent evidence exists and unambiguous testability is possible. If theories are incommensurable, Online Certification Courses, Free Education, Educational Websites, Tutoring Services, Homeschooling Resources, Learning Management Systems, International Education as most philosophers concur, then there can be no crucial experiment to resolve between them. Competing theories must make contrasting predictions about the same events in such experiments. In practice, alternative theories describe the world in alternate ways typically based on alternate concepts and thus predict different types of things about what can be observed.
Typically, therefore, only an experimental test of a theory on its terms is feasible. Experiments in science and science teaching Considering these aspects, it can be wiser for science instructors to motivate kids to look upon theory and experiment as being interdependent and interactive: experiments serve to help theory construction, and theory dictates what types of experiments can and must be conducted.
Experimentation holds a twofold role in theory construction.
First, in the testing of the empirical adequacy of the emerging science course theory and the provision of retrospective evidence for theoretical statements. Second, in directing the further development of theory towards coherence and completeness. For instance, experiments aid the sharpening of concepts and the quantification of conceptual relationships and define the boundaries of applicability of the theory.
Experiment is therefore viewed to be a part of the decision-making process of theory construction. Conversely, theory plays a two-way function in experimentation. First, in generating questions to be explored and problems requiring theoretical explanation and clarification. Second, as an influencing factor in the accurate planning of experiments to resolve those problems and respond to those questions, there can be other theories in play as well. This interactive, holistic conception of the experiment-theory relationship offers a productive conceptual model for idea development in people.
Experiments in science teaching
The question that must be asked at this point is whether any laboratory work in science course schools can be categorized as ‘experiments’, in the senses discussed in the previous section. Since the curriculum revolution of the 1960s and early 1970s, teachers have assumed that students conduct experiments, observe, make inferences, and solve problems in the same way that scientists do and for the same purposes. This notion demands critical scrutiny.
It is necessary to consider very carefully whether the experiments that children do in school resemble in any way those that scientists carry out in the research laboratory and whether the teacher‘s purpose in providing SCF called experimental work as a learning experience resembles that of the scientist in conducting research.
Learning about science
The particular views about the nature of science courses held by curriculum developers will profoundly influence the kinds of experiments and laboratory work that are provided. According to the particular ’philosophic stance’ adopted, relatively different emphases will be afforded to experiments that attempt to ‘prove’ theories, experiments that gather data from which children try to induce theories, and experiments that attempt to test a theory‘s predictions or to settle disputes between theories.
It is clear that the role of experiments is different at each stage, and children would need to be made aware of the distinctions. Generations of teachers have assumed that knowledge of the methodology of science can be taught only through direct hands-on experience at the bench. However, it is not entirely clear whether an appreciation of the role of experiments in these three stages is best achieved by doing similar kinds of experiments in the school laboratory. It does not follow that doing experiments is necessarily the best way of learning and experiments.
Conclusion
This article contends that much of what goes on in our science course classrooms, under the name of practical work, is muddled and without real educational value – largely because teachers fail to recognize the key differences between the role of experiments in science and the role of experiments in science teaching.
Practical work, as presently perceived by science teachers, should be replaced by the wider notion of science learning activities, thus distinguishing practical work i.e., active learning methods and laboratory work, and between laboratory work and experiments.
Teachers must identify, much more clearly than in the past, the goals of particular lessons in terms of individual goals related to learning science, learning about science, and doing science- and select active learning methods, including laboratory work, appropriate to those individual goals.
As fares learning about science is conceded, the traditional inductive notion that experiments are the open-eyed and open-minded confrontation of nature as a means of acquiring objective, value-free, and certain knowledge of the world, be discarded. The simplistic interpretation of the Popperian notion that experiments provide crucial tests of a theory’s empirical adequacy must also be replaced by a more multifunctional view of experiments and a more sophisticated view of their relationships between observation, theory, and experiment.