The teaching laboratory is believed by many to offer unique educational opportunities to science students by allowing them to engage with discipline-specific topics in hands-on activities. Ultimately, this should give them a better idea of how science is practiced by actual researchers. However, there is little evidence that this is the case. Studies have shown that students often participate in laboratory courses without experiencing any appreciable level of scientific authenticity. Additionally, students’ attitudes toward the teaching lab are largely negative. They see it as having little value as part of their science education. There has been a call in recent years to improve this by increasing the level of inquiry in teaching lab activities. However, this is logistically difficult for both large lab courses and introductory lab courses. There is also substantial evidence that inquiry activities alone are not enough to teach students about the broader tenets of science.<br/><br/>The inclusion of instruction on the nature of science could address these failings. The term “nature of science” refers to ideas concerning scientific practice and its implications for scientific knowledge. This instruction would provide students with a better opportunity to internalize what it means to "do science." It could also change their attitudes toward the teaching lab by helping them see how it is related to the authentic practice of science. This mixed-methods study focuses on implementing a new curriculum in a university-level introductory chemistry laboratory course that includes explicit instruction on topics surrounding the nature of science. The goals of the study are to determine the most effective curriculum to improve students’ understanding of the nature of science and to examine how exactly nature of science instruction is impacting the students’ lab experiences. This is determined by the collection of both qualitative and quantitative data, including student work, survey answers, and observations of the laboratory. Early results suggest that students who received explicit nature of science instruction from an instructor who provided opportunities for discussion of these topics performed better on higher-level inquiry tasks, such as experimental design. This points to a more concrete definition of explicit instruction (something lacking in the literature) while also suggesting that nature of science instruction can directly impact students’ scientific practices.

Impact of nature of science instruction on the chemistry laboratory experience

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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