America's Lab Report Investigations in High School Science (2006) / Chapter Skim
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3 Laboratory Experiences and Student Learning
3 Laboratory Experiences and Student Learning
Pages 75-115
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· Computer-based representations and simulations of natural phenomena and large scientific databases are more likely to be effective if they are integrated into a thoughtful sequence of classroom science instruction that also includes laboratory experiences.
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research projects that sequence laboratory experiences with other forms of science instruc tion.1 We propose the phrase "integrated instructional units" to describe these research and design projects that integrate laboratory experiences within a sequence of science instruction. In the following section of this chapter, we present design principles for laboratory experiences derived from our analysis of these multiple strands of research and suggest that laboratory experiences designed according to these principles are most likely to ac complish their learning goals.
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Laboratory experiences may help students learn to address the challenges inherent in directly observing and manipulating the material world, including troubleshooting equipment used to make observations, understanding measurement error, and interpreting and aggregating the resulting data. · Developing practical skills.
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Over the past 10 years, some researchers have shifted their focus. As suming that the study of the natural world requires opportunities to directly encounter that world, investigators are integrating laboratory experiences and other forms of instruction into instructional sequences in order to help students progress toward science learning goals.
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The following sections briefly describe principles of learning derived from recent research in the cognitive sciences and their application in design of integrated instructional units. Principles of Learning Informing Integrated Instructional Units Recent research and development of integrated instructional units that incorporate laboratory experiences are based on a large and growing body of cognitive research.
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monitoring one's progress during problem solving. A final aspect of knowledge-centered learning, which may be particu larly relevant to integrated instructional units, is that the practices and activi ties in which people engage while learning shape what they learn.
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The instructional units discussed below have attempted to restructure the social organization of the classroom and encourage students and the teacher to interact and learn from each other. Design of Integrated Instructional Units The learning principles outlined above have begun to inform design of integrated instructional units that include laboratory experiences with other types of science learning activities.
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. Integrated instructional units interweave laboratory experiences with other types of science learning activities, including lectures, reading, and discus sion.
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For example, video transcripts indicate that students engaged in "science talk" during teacher demonstrations and during student experiments. Researchers at George Washington University, in a partnership with Montgomery County public schools in Maryland, are currently conducting a five-year study of the feasibility of scaling up effective integrated instructional units, including CTA (Lynch, Kuipers, Pyke, and Szesze, in press)
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The integrated instructional unit was designed to help them learn about science processes as well as about the subject of force and motion. The instructional unit supports students as they formulate hypotheses, conduct empirical in vestigations, work with conceptually analogous computer simulations, and refine a conceptual model for the phenomena.
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Teachers play an important role in carrying out the curriculum, asking students to critique their own and each others' investigations and encouraging them to reflect on their own thinking. Over 10 years of study and revision, the integrated instructional unit proved increasingly effective in achieving its stated learning goals.
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Such tests are not able to measure student progress toward goals that may be unique to laboratory experiences, such as developing scientific reasoning, understand ing the complexity and ambiguity of empirical work, and development of practical skills. Finally, most of the available research on typical laboratory experiences does not fully describe these activities.
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To identify studies published between 1994 and 2004, the committee searched electronic databases. To supplement the database search, the committee commissioned three experts to review the nascent body of research on integrated instructional units (Bell, 2005; Duschl, 2004; Millar, 2004)
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points out that many major reviews of science education from the 1960s and 1970s indicate that laboratory work does little to improve understanding of science content as measured by paper and pencil tests, and later studies from the 1980s and early 1990s do not challenge this view. Other studies indicate that typical laboratory experiences are no more effective in helping students master science subject matter than demonstrations in high school biology (Coulter, 1966)
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Evidence from Research on Integrated Instructional Units Current integrated instructional units build on earlier studies that found integration of laboratory experiences with other instructional activities enhanced mastery of subject matter (Dupin and Joshua, 1987; White and Gunstone, 1992, cited in Lunetta, 1998)
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. Many, but not all, of these instructional units combine computer-based simulations of the phenomena under study with direct in teractions with these phenomena.
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. Evidence from Research on Integrated Instructional Units Research developing from studies of integrated instructional units indicates that laboratory experiences can play an important role in developing all aspects of scientific reasoning, including the more complex aspects, if the laboratory experiences are integrated with small group discussion, lectures, and other forms of science instruction.
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. Laboratory experiences play a key role in instructional units designed to enhance students' argumentation abilities, because they provide both the impetus and the data for constructing scientific arguments.
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Evidence from Research on Integrated Instructional Units Studies of integrated instructional units have not examined the extent to which engagement with these units may enhance practical skills in using laboratory materials and equipment. This reflects an instructional emphasis on helping students to learn scientific ideas with real understanding and on developing their skills at investigating scientific phenomena, rather than on particular laboratory techniques, such as taking accurate measurements or manipulating equipment.
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. Evidence from Research on Integrated Instructional Units As discussed above, there is reasonable evidence that integrated instruc tional units help students to learn processes of scientific inquiry.
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. A survey of several integrated instructional units found that they seem to bridge the "language gap" between science in school and scientific practice (Duschl, 2004)
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Student Perceptions of Typical Laboratory Experiences Students' perceptions of laboratory experiences may affect their interest and engagement in science, and some studies have examined those percep tions. Researchers have found that students often do not have clear ideas about the general or specific purposes of their work in typical science labo ratory activities (Chang and Lederman, 1994)
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. Evidence from Research on Integrated Instructional Units Students' interest and attitudes have been measured less often than other goals of laboratory experiences in studies of integrated instructional units.
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Participation in the ThinkerTools instructional unit appears to change students' attitudes toward learning science. After completing the integrated instructional unit, fewer students indicated that "being good at science" was a result of inherited traits, and fewer agreed with the statement, "In general, boys tend to be naturally better at science than girls." In addition, more students indicated that they preferred taking an active role in learning sci ence, rather than simply being told the correct answer by the teacher (White and Frederiksen, 1998)
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The limited evidence available suggests that typical laboratory experiences, by themselves, are neither better nor worse than other methods of science instruction for helping students master science subject matter. However, more recent research indicates that integrated instructional units enhance students' mastery of subject matter.
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The available research suggests that typical laboratory experiences can play a role in enhancing students' interest in science and in learning science. There is evidence that engagement with the laboratory experiences and other learning activities included in integrated instructional units enhances students' interest in science and motivation to learn science.
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Due to a lack of available studies, the committee was unable to draw conclusions about the extent to which either typical laboratory experiences or laboratory experiences incorporated into integrated instructional units might advance the other goals identified at the beginning of this chapter-enhancing understanding of the complexity and ambiguity of empirical work, acquiring practical skills, and developing teamwork skills. PRINCIPLES FOR DESIGN OF EFFECTIVE LABORATORY EXPERIENCES The three bodies of research we have discussed -- research on how people learn, research on typical laboratory experiences, and developing research on how students learn in integrated instructional units -- yield information that promises to inform the design of more effective laboratory experiences.
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The research on integrated instructional units, all of which intertwine exploration of content with process through laboratory experiences, suggests that integration of content and process promotes at tainment of several goals identified by the committee. Ongoing Discussion and Reflection Laboratory experiences are more likely to be effective when they focus students more on discussing the activities they have done during their labo ratory experiences and reflecting on the meaning they can make from them, than on the laboratory activities themselves.
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. In the ThinkerTools integrated instructional unit, abstracted representations of force and motion are provided for students to help them "see" such ideas as force, acceleration, and velocity in two dimensions (White, 1993; White and Frederiksen, 1998)
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They share, however, a common approach to solving a similar set of problems -- how to represent natural phenomena that are otherwise invis ible in ways that help students make their own thinking explicit and guide them to normative scientific understanding. When used as a supplement to hands-on laboratory experiences within integrated instructional units, these representations can support students' conceptual change (e.g., Linn et al., 1998; White and Frederiksen, 1998)
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Rather than thinking of these representations and simulations as a way to replace laboratory experiences, the most successful instructional sequences integrate them with a series of empirical laboratory investigations. These sequences of science instruction focus students' attention on developing a shared interpretation of both the representations and the real laboratory experiences in small groups (Bell, 2005)
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These databases are most commonly built for specific scientific communities, but some re searchers are creating and studying new, learner-centered interfaces to al low access by teachers and schools. These research projects build on in structional design principles illuminated by the integrated instructional units discussed above.
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The two bodies of research on typical laboratory experiences and integrated instructional units, including laboratory experiences, yield different findings about the effectiveness of laboratory experiences in advancing the science learning goals identified by the committee. The earlier research on typical laboratory experiences is weak and fragmented, making it difficult to draw precise conclusions.
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Computer software and the Internet have enabled development of sev eral tools that can support students' science learning, including representa tions of complex phenomena, simulations, and student interaction with large scientific databases. Representations and simulations are most successful in supporting student learning when they are integrated in an instructional sequence that also includes laboratory experiences.
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Science Education, 73, 791-806. Duschl, R.A.
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. Learning and instruction: An examination of four re search perspectives in science education.
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. Linking models to data: Hypermodels for science education.
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. The evolving definition, measurement, and conceptualization of fidelity of implementation in scale-up of highly rated sci ence curriculum unitsintegrated instructional units in diverse middle schools.
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. Secondary school students' beliefs about the physics laboratory, Science Education, 69, 649-63.
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Science Education, 88, 345-372. Schauble, L., Glaser, R., Duschl, R.A., Schulze, S., and John, J
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Science Education, 85, 483-508. Tobin, K
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