On Assessing Laboratory Work

Abstract

As an integral part of scientific way of thinking, practical laboratory tasks are a pivotal part of chemistry education. element of chemistry education. The first section begins with a discussion of how to assess laboratory work according to the current frame curricula for comprehensive and upper secondary schools. The second section discusses laboratory work as a learning method. Several studies have shown, that laboratory work is used mostly to liven up the lessons and to arouse interest rather that to teach something in a goal oriented way. The systematic study on what students learn from laboratory tasks has begun as recently as the 2000s. This paper focuses on the results of two separate studies. In interconnected papers, Abrahams and Millar (2008) as well as Abrahams and Reiss (2012) analyze learning in laboratory tasks using a 2 x 2 effectiveness matrix for practical work. Lewthwaite (2014) discusses the teachers’ choice of laboratory tasks. Both studies highlight the influence of evaluation practices on learning. At the end section, the paper presents some tasks and evaluation models suited for comprehensive and upper secondary school chemistry education. These tasks are based on the levels of learning and taxonomy of leaning presented by Doran and colleagues (2002).