A quote that stuck with me after reading the three articles on Discipline-Based Educational Research (DBER) for this week was “the education system must provide time and opportunity for teachers to interact with their students and also time for students to perform and reflect on complex, investigative tasks” (Hofstein & Lunetta, 2002, p. 47). All three articles focused on the importance that laboratories have in science education and the impact that they have on student learning. Yet as the quote suggests, and all three articles hint at, time and opportunities (such as accessibility to lab materials, teacher exposure, and technology) can limit the labs and types of labs that students perform in science classes.
Starting with the first reading by Brownell and Kloser (2015), the authors focus on course-based research experiences (CURE) that stress including science labs which provide authentic research experiences for students rather than traditional cookbook labs. One of the most interesting things from the article, I found, was table 1 (p. 528) which provides a continuum between these two types of labs. I often think of labs as either cookbook where students are told what to do, when to do it, and how to do it, or as authentic activities where they have full autonomy and decision-making. However, this table suggests a continuum between these two types of labs, which made me start to realize that labs can be “non-cookbook” but also not fully “authentic.” One area I found interesting after reading this section is that the authors classify any non-cookbook lab as CURE. Specifically, I am curious to know why the “structured inquiry” lab type can be considered a type of CURE. While I see that the structure inquiry lab contains an analysis portion, that the cookbook lab does not, I had previously assumed that cookbook labs would require students to go over their results and answer a few questions based on them (even if they knew the answers or what would occur in the lab ahead of time). However, this analysis portion is the only difference between cookbook labs and this type of CURE lab, and I am curious to know what others think about this.
In regards to this reading, I was also curious as to how the K-12 science classes can transition from cookbook labs to those that support CURE. The authors hint at this idea when they state that K-12 science labs “focus on understanding the nature and epistemology of science results in a formulaic application of the five-step scientific method” (p. 530). I am interested in how the five CURE components (use of science practices, collaboration, iteration, discovery, and broadly relevant work) can be directly incorporated into K-12 science education, rather than being seen as almost a ‘stepping stone’ for authentic CURE later on. And more broadly looking at this topic, it is even feasible, with already content-packed K-12 science classes, to incorporate CURE?
The other reading that focused on undergraduate science education was written by Galloway, Malakpa, and Bretz (2015) and centered on affective learning in college chemistry laboratory classes. The authors define affective learning as “include[ing] the constructs of attitude, belief, motivation, confidence, anxiety, and values” (p. 228). This is an important consideration when looking at student learning as each student in a school experiences the same lectures and labs but can vary in the way he/she thinks and behaves depending on his/her affective experiences. One area of this article I found interesting was that the authors provided a list of 12 affective words to current college students enrolled in chemistry labs and then asked them to mark the ones that described their experience in chemistry lab (both generally and after a specific lab) and the words that they would never use to describe their experience in chemistry lab. I understand that the authors included a list of such words to guide students’ responses to include affective terms, but I feel that doing so results in students having to mold how they would describe their affective experiences to fit the words provided. After the students choose the words that described how they felt about their lab, the authors then proceeding in asking students to provide specific examples to support the words they choose. This left me curious and confused as to why the authors did not allow students to state their own words to describe their afferent experiences, as doing so would be lead to more authentic responses.
Lastly, the article by Hofstein and Lunetta (2002) focused on lab learning in a general context where they defined labs “as learning experiences in which students interact with materials and/or with models to observe and understand the natural world” (p. 31). Describing it in this way reminds readers that labs can take various forms but that inquiry and a student-centered approach are major themes in any lab. One portion of the article that I found interesting was when Hofstein and Lunetta describe technology playing a role in labs. After reading their article, I can see how technology plays a role in lab activities such as by allowing teachers to monitor students’ work, allowing for collaboration and argumentation between students, and helping students to find significance in their data. While this was a newer area of research when the article was written in 2002, I am curious to find out ways in which technologies are being using within labs in science classroom over the past 16 years, especially in poorer school districts.
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. (2016). 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
Hi Chloe,
The reasons I found the article on CURE compelling was precisely because of the attention they devoted to constraints that normally exist in any institutional setting. With these constraints in place, the structure inquiry form of lab seems to be the most pragmatic version that can be applied across educational levels. Over and above the requirement of analysis, which I agree is present in varying degrees in cookbook labs, the primary difference I can find between the two is the level of scaffolding that is provided in the two kinds of labs. Cookbook labs usually have a sequence of steps that can be followed and a rigid structural template that students have to fit their observations into whereas a strucutred inquiry lab relaxes some of these constraints a little bit. The structure in the latter comes from restricting the learning goals of what these labs need to address, as opposed to open or authentic CURE labs that would place a higher degree of autonomy on students. The analysis in the CURE labs is a much truer representation of student thinking and understanding and more in line with the practices of the scientific community. They are therefore more authentic, although they aren’t the most CURE version available. Within the constraints of institutions, it is a good step, in my opinion.
As Mieke pointed out in her comment, the structured inquiry is more appropriate for K-12 as a stepping stone to more authentic CURE at the collegiate level. The reasons I can attribute for this are two-fold: K-12 often has a variety of subject areas and a wider variety of learning goals to cover and authentic CURE may not implementable at this level, and in any case, students at the K-12 level may not be entirely well equipped, both in terms of cognitive abilities or content knowledge, or in terms of time and resources available to engage in authentic CURE. Again, I’m forced to concede that this may not be the best version of CURE but is still a better alternative to cookbook labs.
Technology and the role it plays are fascinating in their own right. The Friday colloquium that JD and I attend has a few people from LDT that talk about this. It suffices to say that it is quite complex in it’s own way and certainly worth exploring.
Hi Chloe, I also liked the first quote you shared. I think that some of the labs I took in undergrad really helped add to the course material (as much as we like to complain about them) just because of the smaller class sizes and the ability to interact with peers and a More Knowledgable Other. I think that is would be quite hard to come up with a lab that is fully “authentic” in an undergrad class setting that still covers the material in question and is assess-able. Structured inquiry takes labs a step away from cookbook to a practice that is more similar to the practices of real researchers/scientists, but might not be all the way there.
I found the table informative but confusing. I would like to see an example of a cookbook lab and a CURE lab to compare them.
Hi Chloe – I like your discussion of the continuum between cookbook and CURE labs, and I think this continuum would be useful for considering the K-12 lab approach as well. As you stated, it may not be feasible to implement this type of lab in the lower grade levels, and instead it may prove fruitful to have “a ‘stepping stone’ for authentic CURE later on.” Based on what I’ve read of CURE, I thought it would be something most useful in the college setting, and a structured or guided inquiry approach would be more appropriate to K-12.
Looking at that first table from the CURE paper again, I am also confused on the statement that cookbook labs have no analysis portion. I have not ever seen a lab with no questions, so I think their assertion may be questionable. I would personally consider the two final CURE types – open and authentic – which both have unknown answers, to be “truly” CURE. One of the other papers I read on CUREs, which was not included in the readings for this week, separated the types of labs into traditional, inquiry, CURE, and internships. I think I might prefer those distinctions versus everything that isn’t cookbook is CURE.
Other CURE paper: Auchincloss et al. (2014). Assessment of Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences: A Meeting Report. CBE-Life Sciences Education, 13, 29-40.
I think your point about the continuum of labs fro CURE to cookbook an interesting point. When I think back to some of the cookbook labs that I participated in during undergraduate, they had analysis questions at the end of the lab report that required us to think more broadly about bigger picture topics or phenomenon that could be extrapolated from what our lab demonstrated. Would this be considered structured inquiry? I also think about how some of my own ‘design’ labs where as students, we could make up and test a hypothesis, but was so severely limited by the constraints of the time and resources that although we went through the scientific process, the results were already fairly obvious. Is this structured inquiry? It appears so much more difficult to nail down what counts as a CURE and what does not.
Chloe – I too find the prospect of technology interesting in a classroom. Yet, I wonder beyond the discourse laden activities, how technology influences students understandings of how science works. For example, if they view data through a computer based lab versus doing the same lab in person? I am also interested in how technology can assist in understanding more nuanced ideas about science such as uncertainty and creativity within science. Are these technologies flexible enough to accommodate varied viewpoints or will the technologies reflect more traditional “cook book” labs? I am also curious what the technology does for students in terms of their science discourse that a teacher could not facilitate, or is the point of the technology to make it easier for the teacher in terms of surveillance, control, and what not? How does this new technology actually support students more fully in understanding the nature of science when enacted because ultimately that is how we should be measuring these types of findings in my opinion. Lastly, all this raises questions about learning because I wonder if the technology in question was designed with specific theories of learning in mind and if so, how this would influence the instruction or how students engage with such technology.