Paper to be presented at ESERA2003, August 19 – 23, 2003, Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands.
What questions are raised during lab-work?
Anna-Karin Carstensena,c, Jonte Bernhardb,c
a
School of Engineering, Jönköping University, Jönköping, Sweden.
b
ITN, Linköping University, Campus Norrköping, Sweden.
c
National Graduate School in Science and Technology Education, ITUF, Linköping
University, Sweden.
Abstract
During lab-work students are expected to link observed data, often represented by graphs, to
either theoretical models, or to the real world that they are exploring. In recent research some of
the problems have been examined, e.g. that students do not generalize in a scientifically
epistemic manner and that they do not make links between the object/event world and the
theory/model world. That epistemology of science has to be taught explicitly is also a question
discussed in research.
In this paper we present some questions that students ask during lab-work, and try to compare
these questions to the ones teachers expect them to raise and answer during the lab-sessions.
We also try to find out which questions the students do not answer, and possibly what changes in
the instructions could lead the students to ask relevant questions. We can see that most of the
questions, whether asked or answered, are related to different representations in the
theory/model world, and that very few questions or answers seem to relate to the connection
between theory/model and object/event world.
Introduction
One of the aims of lab-work is to get the students to learn to solve problems in a
scientifically epistemic manner. They are supposed to make links between
observed data, theoretical models, and to the real world that they are exploring. Very
often the students do not make the links between the object/event world and the
theory/model world that the teachers are expecting (Tiberghien, 2000).
We believe that one way of making the students work more like scientists and learn
more from lab-work is to guide them through the lab-work by asking questions that
first makes the students “notice the gaps” and then “fill the gaps” (terms adopted
from Wickman&Östman (2002)). Our research questions are thus: What questions
(raised by the teacher in the lab-instruction or raised by the students) make the
students fill gaps in encounters related to links between the object/event world and
the theory/model world?, Which questions raised by students are not answered by
the teachers or fellow students during the lab-session, so that the gap will linger?
Is it possible to make lab-instructions with questions which highlight certain issues
to make the students notice gaps which the teacher wants the students to fill?
Methods
We have videotaped students’ actions and communications during labs in an
electric circuit course for first year engineering students. The course had 9 labsessions lasting two hours except for one session which lasted four hours. The
students also had lectures 2 hours/week and classroom-sessions 2 hours/week.
On the videotapes we have looked for the occasions when students raise
questions to the teachers, and tried to examine what kinds of questions the
students raise, and also if these are the questions that they first intended to ask, or
if they have reformulated their questions before raising them. We have furthermore
tried to examine whether or not the student have felt satisfied with the response that
they have received, and if they were not satisfied, if the question was raised later on
during the course.
We have used the videotapes to evaluate the lab instructions and the teacher
interventions, and used the results when rewriting the instructions for a reformed
course which is running during this spring semester. In the reformed course we
have integrated the recitations and the lab-sessions into 13 weekly four hour
“problemsolving labs”. We are, in this reformed course, making some in-depth
studies with video of a few selected groups. The lectures are, as last year, 2
hours/week.
In the evaluation of these tapes we are now especially interested in how the
students use the questions raised in the instructions, and if the questions that the
students raise have changed. The questions have to be carefully developed, so that
they promote linkage between theory and real world (Bernhard, 2003)
Results
Although students very often discuss issues concerning different parts of the
theory/model world, mathematical expressions, graphical representations etc., they
hardly ever revise one part of an experimental in a later experiment. Very often it i s
implied that they should connect results from one experiment to another or from a
classroom-session to an experiment. The students may be asked to make
comparisons between experimental results and theoretical models, although the
model is not explicit in the lab-instruction. This may make the students use another
model than the one intended: “We don’t find an appropriate formula to apply!”, or
they may question their experimental results: “But is this curve the one we should
look at?” or “Should the curve look like this?”.
One of our findings from the first course is that the students seem to raise fewer
questions later on in the course, although the content is more difficult to
understand. The questions raised are more of “Should the curve look like this?”
and less of “What does this mean?” or “Explain this!” later in the course.
In the revised course we introduced some questions like: "How would you explain
this physically and mathematically?" We also inserted some problem solving into
the lab-instructions, which made the student go back to their notes from the
lectures, since they recognized the problem as something they had heard of before.
The most significant difference between the old and new course was noticed
towards the end of the course (lab 8 in the old course, and lab 9 in the new), where
the questions the students raised in the revised course were more of the intended:
"What does this mean? Let's go back to the lecture notes. Here we have
something. Do you think it is a damped sine or an exponential curve?"
Conclusion and Implications
According to the findings presented in the introduction, one reason for fewer
questions at the end of the course is that when students do not fill gaps, they stop
the current activity (Wickman in press). They try to go on, but the help they want i s
only to make the teacher answer whether or not the graphs they come up with
seem relevant to the teacher. If the teacher asks them about their results, the
students answer: “I will look into that when I am working on my report later on”.
In the reformed course some of the issues which make the students notice gaps in
relation to what is standing fast, are made explicit in the lab-instructions. The
discussion among the students has in the reformed course changed into a
discussion on how the measured graphs are related to the mathematical model
taught in lectures. Most students try to, and very often succeed in relating the theory
to the physical world already during the lab. It seems that the students actually
notice the gaps, fill them, and do so mostly through discussions among
themselves, asking the teachers remarkably fewer questions.
That epistemic issues are learned when made explicit by the teachers is found by
research (Ryder et. al. 2001), and we have also found that the same is true for
linking between theory/model and object/event worlds. That the order of noticing
gaps can be controlled, or at least changed by teacher interventions is stated by
Wickman (in press), and our investigations show that when teacher inventions are
inserted into the lab-instructions, students use them both to notice gaps and fill
those. There are a couple of lab-instructions (e.g. a lab on magnetic coupling)
which were not revised, and in those labs, the problems with connections between
theory and practice were still resulting in lingering gaps.
The most important implication will be to work more carefully on lab-instructions,
and to do so according to discourse of language games, sequencing the gaps to
notice by using appropriate questions and giving some bridging problems in the
instructions.
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