I enjoyed the readings chosen for this week, particularly as this area of research is relevant to our own experiences during tertiary study and I had not read widely on the subject prior.
Galloway, Malakpa, & Bretz (2015) consider how the affective experiences of students influence learning within laboratory settings. I agree with the authors in that learning cannot only be considered from a cognitive and psychomotor approach, that affective and emotional responses will contribute to meaningful learning. But, I can see the methodology of this study as being limiting. The ineffective pilot study described that preceded creation of the word list (Figure 3. p.230) made me wonder what questions had been asked of students initially. Having students circle words may be effective at getting the data that the researchers want to see and is easily analyzed, but does it truly reflect affective responses? These words seemed to automate student ideas, that were ironically, representing to what degree of control they (the students) felt they had within laboratory classes. As undergraduates, surely they can communicate, using their own words, how they felt about various instances on the video. I do wonder how this study could be constructed differently, in order to meet research objectives and perhaps gain a better depth of student responses.
Hofstein and Lunetta (2004) provided a thorough summary on laboratory learning. This was a very comprehensive literature review which provided some obvious, and other not so obvious, inhibitors to successful learning in the school science laboratory. These factors included questioning the value of widely used ‘cookbook’ lists of tasks for students to undertake which fail to make students think about the larger purpose, objective or sequence of the tasks to achieve a desired outcome, and the issue of access regarding resources (time, space, technology). These factors seemed fairly obvious in regards to limiting the educational value of laboratory learning environments. However, less obvious, is how we can overcome what Hofstein and Lunetta (2004) consider the inhibitors involving teaching and administrative education, how to teach teachers better in order to design more student centered and inquiry driven research. After reading this paper, I thought about how my laboratory experience during high school and college had influenced my education, particularly in leading me to pursue biology. I can honestly say that it did not help whatsoever. I remember structured labs in high school as being a formality and largely unproductive, I could actually visualize why this was the case when I the authors argued, ‘data gathered in many countries has continued to suggest that teachers spend large portions of laboratory time in managerial functions, not in soliciting and probing ideas or in teaching that challenges students ideas, encouraging them to consider and test alternative hypothesis…’ (p.44). My laboratory classes were largely about damage control, making the best of equipment that had seen too many rotations of the earth around the sun, trying to finish a worksheet and copying the persons data who had ‘gotten it right’ so that we could hand in a lab report to pass. During early college, our lab class would only finish when we had obtained the correct numerical value according to a software program or time ran out after 3.5 hours. It wasn’t until my senior year did our labs involve designing and conducting our own research and even then, this experience was constrained by budget and what was feasible for the time and interest of our professor. The reason I have described these situations is that even when I undertook labs that allowed for inquiry and testing hypothesis, I found that it was still not truly legitimate and this was at a senior college level. In contrast, I was also a part of a research lab group that worked essentially as data collectors, and then editors for a manuscript that our professor was publishing. Even though this time was spent doing a lot of repetitive tasks (counting cells, filling in data tables etc.) I received so much more out of this time because I could see the importance of this work to something bigger than a grade or test result. Our work was needed in a legitimate science context. I was, very fortunate, to of had this opportunity, but it has made me consider that labs as they exist now, probably wouldn’t necessarily improve if the teacher attends PD’s or the technology updated, or the student can make up a hypothesis and test it, because at the end of the day those methods of inquiry are still fairly predetermined and predictable based on the scope of the class. Brownell and Kloser (2015) address these circumstances with their work on CUREs, by ‘blending aspects of teaching and research’ university professors are able to create laboratory learning environments for students to participate in a more authentic form of scientific practice (p.537). This method aims to address the issues identified by Hofstein and Lunetta (2004), particularly in removing the ‘cook-book’ lab in favor of an educative scenario where scientific practices involving thinking, communicating, and using tools in a way that is more like a scientist, are undertaken by the student. This method, in theory, appears an excellent solution to the issues of limited research assistant positions within a large R1 institution with hundreds of students in classes, and conversely, smaller teaching schools with reduced research focus. I do wonder whether CUREs are any different from senior capstone projects and independent study courses that are offered. Ideally CUREs would be implemented from an early year level, but during the initial years of a degree, foundational classes place a far greater amount of time on content knowledge and allot trivial time, and marks, for labs. If a CURE replaced the traditional laboratory requirement of a course, would this proportion of time be sufficient to undertake ‘in-depth’ meaningful research? The ability of a CURE to give meaningful learning opportunities for students ultimately lies with the professors willingness to adopt this form of teaching. I see the ideology of a CURE being successful, but worry that its implementation may just result in undergraduate students becoming the labor behind a professor’s research lab, ie. conducting repetitive data entry or other tasks that won’t necessarily lead to a meaningful teaching experience. Ensuring appropriate implementation of this kind of intervention would be just as important, and complex, as developing the framework of the theory itself
Works Cited:
- Brownell, S. E., & Kloser, M. J. (2015). Toward a conceptual framework for measuring the effectiveness of course-based undergraduate research experiences in undergraduate biology. Studies in Higher Education, 40(3), 525–544. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2015.1004234
- Galloway, K. R., Malakpa, Z., & Bretz, S. L. (2015). Investigating Affective Experiences in the Undergraduate Chemistry Laboratory: Students’ Perceptions of Control and Responsibility. Journal of Chemical Education, 93(2), 227–238. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.5b00737
- Hofstein, A., & Lunetta, V. N. (2004). The Laboratory in Science Education: Foundations for the Twenty-First Century. Science Education, 88(1), 28–54. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.10106
Harriet, I also felt the same way about the affective word matrix activity that Galloway, Malakpa, & Bretz (2015) use in their paper. While I understand that such having a list of such words was provided to guide students’ responses to include affective terms, I felt that doing so resulted in students having to mold how they would describe their affective experiences in chemistry labs to fit the words provided. I wonder if in the future the researchers could expand the list of affective words to include more than 18 or to even have an “additional” category where students could provide their own words to describe their experiences. Students could even start the interview process by writing down words that they feel describe their affective experiences, then they could be shown the list of 18 words, circling those that they feel best relate to the words they had written down initially. Another, more obvious option, is just to have students write down their own descriptive words to describe their affective experiences in chemistry labs. However I feel that Galloway, Malakpa, & Bretz (2015) make it obvious that they do not feel that undergraduates can do so when they state “One challenge with interviews is that students may not possess the vocabulary to precisely describe their experiences” (p. 227).
Hi Harriet, when you explain how your senior level research was needed to complete legitimate research, it sounds a lot like our discussion of legitimate peripheral participation. While these types of research positions can be valuable– for instance, in my undergrad research position I learned to code in R– I think they can also be limiting. In that same job, I also spent 5 months running leaves through a scanner and counting cells under a microscope. One thing that current undergrad lab classes attempt to do (at least the ones I’m involved with), is expose students to a wide variety of lab skills and equipment/technology that is relevant to a wide variety of topics. These labs also attempt to make a connection to the content the class is covering– I think that this attempt is what often needs sorting out.
I assume they standardized the affect terms to make it easier to compare and extrapolate data. If the students answered in an open response format using their own words it would prevent any sort of analysis.
Hi Harriet (I’m guessing it’s you based on process of elimination!) – This statement in the first paragraph stood out to me, as I hadn’t really considered this in these terms: “These words seemed to automate student ideas, that were ironically, representing to what degree of control they (the students) felt they had within laboratory classes.” By removing the autonomy for students to describe their own experiences on their own terms, I wonder how this would affect the results of this study. I think this paper is the most DBER-y of this week’s papers, and it really reveals some of the problems of this type of research.
For CUREs, I also had some concern that implementation may result in students just being labor for some professor’s research. As you said, it is up to professors to adequately adopt this teaching method. Something I’m interested in looking at (outside the scope of this class) is professor identity and teaching. Many college professors, especially at R1 universities, do not consider “teacher” as a central aspect of their identity. This of course complicates the issue of teacher training, as all the training in the world can’t help if the educator isn’t invested in educating!
I appreciated the skepticism of the CURE model in your final paragraph. Recognizing the potential for this model within undergraduate education, I wonder if the main goal of a CURE could actually be accomplished? What does it mean for a professor to blend research and teaching? How would this look in practice? I think it is wonderful that you participated on a research project as an undergraduate, but are CUREs designed to mimic that experience? Also I wonder what you gained in terms of understanding science. I could see students participating in CUREs not really comprehending what they are learning about science. Unless ideas about the nature of science are made salient, will students simply “go through the motions?” Will the faculty or people teaching these labs be prepared to probe and question in ways that will cultivate deeper conceptual understandings? As you can tell I have many questions regarding these ideas and ultimately, I think it still comes down to how the instructor operates within the context that will determine what is learned regardless of how “authentic” the lab experience is.