Abstract
Pre-laboratory activities are designed to focus the attention of students on some aspects of the experiment they are preparing to do during the week. Previous research has found that such activities reduce the cognitive load in laboratory time and tend to increase the efficiency of students' laboratory work. This research aims at comparing the importance of demographic characteristics affecting the teachers' use of pre-laboratory activities in a chemistry class. In the frame of the quantitative survey research, an online questionnaire was completed by 166 chemistry teachers from all regions in Croatia. In pre-laboratory sessions, the teachers most commonly used a pre-lab discussion and pre-lab worksheets whereas computer simulations were represented the least. Three characteristics affecting the teachers' use of pre-laboratory activities in chemistry classes were their gender, age and teaching subjects. The teachers' education, teaching experience and school types were nonsignificant characteristics.
Highlights
Laboratory activities are learning experiences in which students interact with materials and/or models to observe and understand the natural world
The results revealed that the majority of the participants were female (88.6%), which presents a realistic picture of the great underrepresentation of the male gender in Croatian primary and secondary schools
The results show that about a half of the participants never use computer simulations as pre-laboratory activities (PLABs), whereas almost one-third do that sometimes
Summary
Laboratory activities are learning experiences in which students interact with materials and/or models to observe and understand the natural world. Science educators have suggested that many benefits accrue from engaging students in science laboratory activities.[1] This includes exposing students to concrete experiences with objects and concepts mentioned in the classroom.[2] In addition, it allows the connection of macroscopic observations to the abstract representations and symbolizations used in science to be made by facilitating the understanding of chemical concepts.[3] Literature findings have indicated that the students’ preparation for laboratory work should increase the chances of their understanding of what they are doing in the lab This is intended to avoid a ‘cookbook’ or ‘recipe-following scenario’.4
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