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Lab Work and Learning in Secondary School Chemistry: The Importance of Teacher and Student Interaction

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Abstract

Laboratory work is considered essential in promoting students’ learning of science and of scientific inquiry. What the students perceive as important to learn from a regular laboratory exercise is probably affected by the teacher’s objectives. We study the extent to which one teacher’s objectives are fulfilled during lab work, and how teacher–student and student–student interactions contribute to developing learning experiences from the laboratory exercise. Do students encounter opportunities to learn in agreement with the teacher’s objectives? This explanatory single case study includes use of a palette of methods, such as pre- and post-interviews, observations and video documentation from an experienced secondary school teacher and her 8th grade (aged 13–14) students’ laboratory work. Our results point to the importance of teacher involvement to help students understand what to look for, how to do it and why. Especially teacher–student interactions during lab work seemed to influence what students perceived as important to learn. In the laboratory exercise in this case, the teacher helped the students to observe and to use their observations in their explanations. The lab work included learning experiences other than those addressed by the teacher, and the teacher’s intentions were partially fulfilled. Not only what the teacher says, but also how the teacher acts is important to help students understand what to learn from a laboratory exercise.

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Notes

  1. The manual is translated by kind permission of Chemistry Teachers Resource Centre (Kemilärarnas ResursCentrum), Sweden, 020108.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics Technology and Science Education, Umeå University, SE 901 87, Umeå, Sweden

    Per Högström & Christina Ottander

  2. Department of Physics, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

    Sylvia Benckert

Authors
  1. Per Högström
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  2. Christina Ottander
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  3. Sylvia Benckert
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Per Högström.

Appendix 1

Appendix 1

Polyvinyl AlcoholFootnote 1

Why is polyvinyl alcohol a different plastic?

  1. Task A.

     

Your task is to examine properties of polyvinyl alcohol in different solvents.

Material:

Polyvinyl alcohol foil

Cold and hot water, acetone, ethanol, possibly methanol and other solvents

Beakers or test tubes, plastic pipettes

figure a

Procedures:

Use a plastic pipette to put a droplet of cold water on the plastic’s surface and watch what happens.

Is there any difference between the red and the transparent part of the plastic? Do they show different behavior in hot water?

Examine after that, in a beaker or a test tube, how a strip of polyvinyl alcohol foil behaves in different solvents.

  1. Task B.

     

Examine properties of a polyvinyl alcohol solution.

Material:

Polyvinyl alcohol solution, different solvents (e.g. ethanol, methanol, cyclohexane), pipette, beaker/test tube

Flashlight

Procedures:

Put some drops of polyvinyl alcohol solution into beakers/test tubes with the different solvents.

Or do the opposite: put some drops of solvent in a beaker with polyvinyl alcohol solution.

Which solvents make polyvinyl alcohol form a precipitate? Can you explain what happens?

Try to draw a picture of what it looks like in the water where the polymer (polyvinyl alcohol) is dissolved? Consider that you could make it form a precipitate again in some of the solvents!

Polyvinyl alcohol

Polyvinyl alcohol consists of carbon–hydrogen chains where a hydrogen atom on every second carbon atom is replaced by an OH-group. In the picture there are two chains (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1
figure 1

The structural formula of polyvinyl alcohol

Full size image

A piece of a molecule chain in a ball and pin model is shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2
figure 2

A piece of a polyvinyl alcohol molecule in a ball and pin model

Full size image

Questions and Assignments:

  1. 1.

    Discuss why the polyvinyl alcohol has such different properties from polyethylene. In polyethylene the polymer molecules can be drawn like this. Every bend is a CH2-group (Fig. 3).

    Fig. 3
    figure 3

     

    Full size image
  2. 2.

    The city council use polyvinyl alcohol in their washing bags. The germ-infested laundry is put in the bags and then tossed into the washing machine at the laundry. The dirty laundry therefore only has to be handled once. With your experiences from the laboratory exercise—what happens within the washing machine? (Does the red or the transparent polymer dissolve faster/more easily? Do you have any idea why?)

  3. 3.

    There must be more applications available for plastics that dissolve in water, mustn’t there? For what product is it possible to use polyvinyl alcohol? Make suggestions and advertise your product!

  4. 4.

    In your solution there are polyvinyl alcohol molecules that on average consist of 1,600 monomers “pieces”. Assume that you instead have molecules that are much bigger, with several thousand monomers. What do you think will happen to the solubility of such a polymer?

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Högström, P., Ottander, C. & Benckert, S. Lab Work and Learning in Secondary School Chemistry: The Importance of Teacher and Student Interaction. Res Sci Educ 40, 505–523 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-009-9131-3

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