Teaching Scientific Method in Labs

You can improve your teaching of thinking skills
(scientific method & more) in the science laboratory
by a creative use of goal-directed thinking activities
in Discussion-Based Labs and in other ways.

Thinking Activities
The principle of thinking activities is described in Aesop's Activities for Goal-Directed Education:

Activities and Experience
How can we design activities (with the goal of helping students learn ideas & skills) that are enjoyable and educationally productive? For a creative teacher the possibilities are numerous and the range is wide. During an activity, students can: engage in... [a list of thinking activities is below]
Most of these activities promote thinking by students, so they are thinking activities.

During an activity, students can think and do, listen and talk, read and write. If activities are well designed, students will be gaining educationally functional experience with the ideas and skills that are your educational goals.
A useful analytical tool for teachers — a visually organized method for exploring and improving the structure of instruction, for creatively coordinating activities and experiences — is below, in Analyzing the Structure of Instruction. First, however, let's look at a valuable type of educational activity.

A goal-directed approach to education has two main components: instructional activities that promote educationally useful experience (as described above), and (in this section) teaching methods that help students learn more from their experience, and remember what they have learned, and transfer this knowledge to new situations. In an effort to do this, one effective teaching strategy is to direct students' attention to "what can be learned" from an experience in a reflection request that encourages students to think about what they are doing and why, about the possibilities for learning, and why they should want to take advantage of this valuable opportunity.
A thinking activity can be implicit or explicit, and either can effectively promote learning. According to Webster's Dictionary, reflection is "a fixing of the mind on some subject; serious thought; contemplation," and a request for reflection converts a thinking activity from implicit to explicit. An implicit thinking activity is an intrinsic part of an overall activity; students will automatically think because it's necessary to finish the activity. In an explicit thinking activity a teacher directs attention to what can be learned, by a simple reminder or by a request for action, such as discussing a question verbally or writing about it in a report. Either way, it can shift a student from a minimally aware "going through the motions" mode to a more aware "active thinking" mode. / Of course, reflection can occur without a reminder from a teacher, whenever a student is thinking about an activity or "what can be learned" from it. And learning can occur even when a student is not aware of what is happening. But a reflection request will often increase learning by students.
the timing of reflection: A teacher can initiate reflective mental-activity before a physical-activity, during it, or after it. .....
note: This is the end of quoting from Aesop's Activities for Goal-Directed Education.

Thinking Activities — for Skills & Concepts
Although thinking activities can be used to teach both thinking skills and science concepts, this page will focus on the creative-and-critical thinking skills used in the problem-solving (question-answering) methods of scientists, which I'm defining as scientific method.

Scientific Method in the Science Laboratory
A classroom lab, where students do science and think about science, is an ideal place to teach scientific method. By a creative design of classroom labs, teachers can help students learn the skills used by scientists in research labs.
Scientific Method for Students and Teachers: Labs for thinking skills are beneficial for students & teachers, and for teachers who are students. In a major university, most of the lab teaching is done by graduate students whose main goal (as students) is learning how to become skilled scientists in research labs. An important benefit of scientific method labs is that graduate students — when they discuss thinking skills with undergraduate students in labs — are improving their own thinking skills, their own knowledge and mastery of scientific method.

Scientific Method — A Personal History
I began to be fascinated by scientific thinking and "scientific methods" while I was a graduate student in Chemistry at the University of Washington (UW-West in Seattle) when I discovered An Introduction to Scientific Research by E. Bright Wilson. I continued learning about creative and critical thinking skills by reading and writing about these skills, and teaching them at the UW Experimental College. My enthusiastic fascination with scientific thinking continued at the University of Wisconsin (UW-Midwest in Madison) first as a graduate student in History of Science, and then in Curriculum & Instruction (specializing in Science Education) where my PhD dissertation examined scientific thinking in two ways: 1) developing a unified synthesis of ideas — mainly from scientists and philosophers, but also from sociologists, psychologists, historians, and myself — to construct a model of scientific method; 2) using this model for the integrative analysis of a creative science-inquiry classroom.

My model of scientific method describes the functionally integrated relationships between nine aspects of action used by scientists during the process of science, so I call it Integrated Scientific Method. This model is summarized in a list of the model's 9 parts and Scientific Method - An Overview and with more depth (but much less than in my dissertation) in Scientific Method - A Detailed Overview.
The methods of science begin with the main principle of scientific logic, which is not strange and mysterious, but is the same thinking you use in everyday life: in scientific logic, as in daily life, you use reality checks — by comparing theory-based predictions with reality-based observations — to determine whether your theory about "the way the world is" matches "the way the world really is." Then, building on this simple logical foundation, you can move onward to explore the fascinating variety and complexity of scientific methods.
The principles of using "integrative analysis" to recognize (and inspire) opportunities for learning, to teach skills and ideas more effectively, are summarized in the following section of Aesop's Activities for Goal-Directed Education:

Integrative Analysis of Instruction
When students do activities, they gain experience. Opportunities for educational experience — for experience that is educationally functional, that is useful for achieving educational goals — can be analyzed using an activity-and-experience table, as shown below, with student ACTIVITIES in the top row and educationally functional EXPERIENCES in the left column.
This table clearly shows multi-experience activities (scanning vertically down the second column, we see that Activity #2 provides Experiences B and C) and repeated experiences (scanning the C-row horizontally, we see that experience with B occurs in Activities 1, 2 and 5). A table may reveal gaps that will guide the designing of new activities. For example, an earlier version of this table might have motivated a teacher, who noticed that after Activities 1-3 the students have no experience doing A, to add Activities 4 and 5.

Student Activities

Educational
Experiences

exam

yes

Of course, a "yes" does not tell the whole story. ..... {details from "Aesop's Activities..." are omitted here}
How long is an activity? This varies. A mini-activity may be over in a few minutes, while a coherent mega-activity (composed of related mini-activities) can last several hours. ..... There is lots of flexibility in defining "activities" and "experiences" so A-and-E tables can be made and used in any way you want. Do whatever will help you understand and improve the structure of your instruction. .....
a confession: In many teaching situations I don't MAKE this kind of table. But I usually THINK in terms of "activities and experiences and their interactions" while planning instruction, because this provides a different perspective that can be very useful.
a summary of benefits: In a table, the visual organization of information can improve our understanding of the educationally functional relationships between activities, between experiences, and between activities and experiences. This knowledge about the structure of instruction can help us creatively coordinate — with respect to types of experience, levels of sophistication, and contexts — the activities that promote experiences. The goal of a carefully planned selection and sequencing of activities is to develop a mutually supportive synergism between the activities, to build a coherent system for teaching each type of thinking skill, to produce a more effective environment for learning.

Scientific Method in Labs — A Personal History
I've explored possibilities for teaching scientific methods of thinking in science labs in four teaching contexts: in Seattle, as a graduate student in chemistry, I wrote a comprehensive set of guidelines for revising a General Chemistry Lab Course; in Madison, while a grad student in history of science, working in the physics department, I developed handouts for teaching science concepts in our labs for Physics in the Arts (we played with music, photography, and light-colors!) and First-Year Physics; while a grad student in science education (working in the chemistry department) and then continuing to the present, I've developed lots of ideas for using labs to help students learn the thinking skills of scientific method in labs for General Chemistry:

Examples of Thinking Activities
You'll find a wide variety of ways to use thinking activities (illustrated by examples from general chemistry labs) in Thinking Skills in Labs.

Thinking Skills (scientific method & more) in Education
Teachers can design thinking activities — in labs and in other educational contexts — to help students learn scientific thinking and scientific concepts. You can explore these thinking skills in a links-page for PROBLEM SOLVING IN EDUCATION and also Thinking Skills & Problem Solving in Education which is a sitemap for pages I've developed (by condensing and extending my PhD dissertation) about scientific method & design method, along with ideas for designing educational methods that will promote a more effective teaching of thinking skills.

Thinking Activities
During an activity, students can: engage in lively discussions or debates, read a book or listen to a lecture; search the library or internet to discover what others have learned about a topic; study history or current events; learn about different perspectives on "science, technology, and society" issues; analyze a complex situation that involves conflicting goal-criteria and complex causal factors; learn and apply new ideas; learn and apply new skills, including strategies for problem solving; solve problems (ranging in difficulty from simple to complex, solvable by known methods or requiring improvisational creativity), do case studies, play "detective" games, formulate a question or problem; design and do an experiment, or do an experiment by converting instructions (written or verbal) into action; make observations and collect data (with only the senses or using measuring instruments); analyze data (that they have collected, or that was supplied for them) by searching for patterns and working with statistics, make a graph (by hand or using a computer) and use it for visual/mathematical data analysis; use scientific logic (to analyze and evaluate existing theories, or invent new theories, to analyze and evaluate an existing experiment, or design a new experiment), examine the content and style of scientific writing in a journal paper, or...

Thinking Activities can be used in many different ways, and here is one way:

Using Discussions to Stimulate Thinking
While serving as a Teaching Assistant at the University of Wisconsin, I tried a teaching experiment in the second semester of a physics course. Instead of the traditional method used in the first semester, with students writing a lab report that isn't graded until the lab is over, we converted the writing into talking.
What did we talk about? To prepare for a Discussion-Based Lab, I split a lab into parts and developed mini-activities — data to gather, calculations to do, problems to solve, concepts to ponder, questions to answer,... — for each part. Some of the activities were bsed on the students' lab manual (as-is or revised), supplemented by followup questions, usually asked by me but sometimes by students.
During the lab, when students working in a group finish the activities for Part 1 they ask me to discuss what they have done. When everyone is satisfied that the discussion is over, I put an X in one cell of a discussion grid (shown below for Group C) and they move on to Part 2. When a group has X's for each part of the lab, they are free to leave.

	Student Activities in Lab
Students	Part 1	Part 2	Part 3	Part 4
Group A
Group B
Group C	X
Group D
Group E

PACING: I had to improvise in an effort to achieve optimal pacing. In a 2-hour lab period, having 20 discussions (as in the grid above) is difficult, even for a fast-talking, quick-listening TA. To minimize delays when students had to wait for me, often two or more groups would combine for a discussion. This worked well, and if students did have to wait, this seemed to be all right because they could talk with each other (building relationships and community) or begin working on the next part of the lab. And, of course, to minimize the problem of waiting the "discussion" component of a lab can be decreased, by mixing discussion (for some questions) with a written report (for other questions).

Although the specific technique described here (using a grid to provide structure for a lab) was a new idea for me, it is just a variation on an old theme. The general strategy of using discussions to stimulate active thinking is common in education, so you probably have experience (as a student or teacher, or both) with this approach to learning.

A Bigger Picture
Discussion-Based Labs are especially valuable when they are part of an overall plan, when they occur in goal-directed education with a teacher designing activities to achieve educational goals, as outlined in Aesop's Activities for Goal-Directed Education. Of course, a discussion-based lab is only one educational context for using thinking activities; creative teachers can imagine (and then actualize) many other possibilities.

comment: After writing this section, I've thought about creative possibilities for hybrid labs with some goal knowledge (concepts and skills) being topics for discussions (that are minimally graded or are graded later) and some knowledge being "undiscussed" so it can be graded in traditional ways such as lab reports. / I haven't written anything yet about detailed applications of this idea, but the basic principle is fairly simple and you'll probably want to figure out the details for yourself anyway. :<)

The rest of this page discusses actual benefits and potential problems that are "potential" because they don't have to be actual problems: With a careful, creative design of instruction, we can maximize the benefits of discussion-based labs and minimize the problems that could occur but (with good design) probably won't occur.

Actual Benefits (for Students & Teachers)
When I asked for anonymous feedback from students in my physics class almost all of them said that, compared with their traditional "report with grading" labs during the first semester, in our discussion-based labs they had more fun and did less "work" but they learned more. This sounds like a good situation.
Yes, most students enjoy discussion-based labs because — in contrast with a traditional lab in which they write reports and get feedback that is not very detailed and is delayed — they get thought-stimulating feedback that is detailed and immediate, while they're doing the lab and are actively thinking about it. Due to this constructive feedback and their increased interactions with the teacher and with each other, students learn more and enjoy the labs more.
For similar reasons, these labs are also educational and enjoyable for the teacher. My own learning and fun increased due to the discussions, and because the time I would have spent on a boring, unpleasant task (grading lab reports) was invested in a productive activity (preparing for labs) that was intellectually stimulating and enjoyable. Before each lab, during my planning of thinking activities for students, I was improving my own thinking skills. And during each lab the teaching was more effective and satisfying because it was easy to give students the high-quality feedback (immediate, customized, and detailed) that, as a conscientious teacher, I wanted to provide. With a no-grading policy, during our discussions I could focus my total attention on teaching (rather than judging), and students could focus on learning rather than being judged. This produced a learning environment that was very effective; because I was only a teacher (and was not also a judge) I could ask and answer any question freely, thinking only about what was best for the students. When I decided to withhold information (by asking a question instead of giving a direct answer) my only motivation was pedagogical, and the purpose was to challenge students, to make them think, to let them play a more active role in their own learning. I never had to worry about whether I was "giving away too much information" to one group (but not others) about a question that later would be used to assign a grade for the lab. It was a liberating experience for me, and was educationally beneficial for my students. {more about teacher versus judge}

Potential Problems (that are not actual problems?)
In this section, two questions are discussed, to show why potential problems may not be actual problems, and how — with a careful, creative design of instruction — we can maximize the benefits and minimize the problems that could occur but (with good instructional design) probably won't occur.

First,
Quality of Teachers:
Labs that are discussion-based (DB) are an effective way to provide frequent thinking activities, to produce more learning and more fun for students. But if the quality of their lab experience depends on interactions with a teacher, what happens when students get a teacher with less ability, experience, or motivation? { note: In the rest of this section, some comments are oriented toward a large college course in which labs are taught by many different TAs, but these comments may also be useful — with appropriate "personal modifications" to fit the reader's situation — for teachers who are totally in charge of their own course. }
I'll begin by describing my own experience, before moving into generalizations.
I'm fairly shy in many situations, but I enjoy thinking and talking about ideas. For me, DB labs make interactions with students much easier, more enjoyable, and more effective for teaching. Why? If there is no "reason" to talk with students, and everything depends on my own social intuitions and actions, I often find it difficult to achieve an improvised balance between ignoring students and bothering them with too much attention. But with motivation provided by the grid, which must be filled with Xs before they can leave the lab, students initiate conversations. And our discussions have a clear intellectual focus: their own experiences and "what they can learn" about science concepts and thinking skills. Usually, talking about these topics is interesting and educational for all of us, and it also leads to small-talk that produces social and emotional bonding, both student-teacher and student-student. DB provides a useful organizing structure for interactions that lead to learning and to an improved rapport between everyone in the learning community we're building.
Consider four types of teachers in DB labs: ... [The original full-length page explains why DB is not a disadvantage for students with any of these TAs.] ...
In a course with many TAs, will all students have teachers who are equally good in DB labs? No. There will be variations in lab; but these will occur in lab with or without DB, and they are similar to variations in discussion sections. But the main goal should not be consistency, which can never be fully achieved. It is much more important to ask a pragmatic question: Will "the greatest good for the greatest number" be promoted by discussion-based labs?

Second,
Evaluation and Grading:
At the end of a lab, a discussion grid that is totally filled with Xs provides no basis for distinguishing among students when assigning lab grades. Is this a significant problem?
If labs are part of a course (instead of the entire focus of a course), what are the options for weighting the lab grades within the course? Compared with traditional grading policies, labs could be assigned: 1. more weight, 2. the same weight, 3. less weight, 4. no weight. { Yes, #4 is an option. In four semesters of teaching physics in two different courses, I never assigned a lab grade, and this worked well. } DB labs can be used with any of these grading policies. But my experience indicates that DB is more compatible, both philosophically and practically, with 3 or 4.
What are the connections between external accountability, motivation, and learning? If lab grades are weighed less heavily, as in Options 3 or 4, will this hinder learning? Maybe. Or maybe not, because:
When a lab is closely integrated with a course, the exams can be designed to test the scientific concepts and thinking skills that are being learned in labs. Or there can be separate exams for the lab, as explained in the original full-length page.
There can still be external accountability, even with a policy of "no official grading." Just let students know that labs will affect their course grade negatively if they skip labs or are uncooperative in attitudes or actions, or positively if they do very good work in labs, especially if they are on a borderline between grades. { In my experience, most students have been consistently cooperative and attentive. }
Internal motivation can exist without external accountability. During DB labs I emphasize that, for students who will be rewarded for thinking in their professional careers (and in life as a whole) there is a high intrinsic value in learning how to think more skillfully. Internal motivations, which result in a pursuit of goal-directed intentional learning for long-term personal gain, are probably not correlated with grading policies. { I'm not sure about the correlations, although there is some research showing that external rewards and internal attitudes can be inversely correlated, due to "cognitive dissonance" reasoning that occurs due to a desire to be internally consistent as an integrated whole person. } Of course, the intrinsic value of learning should be strongly emphasized, no matter what grading policy is adopted. / Because internal motivation is so important for education and for discussion-based labs, I suggest reading the "motivation" and "thinking activities" parts of my page about Aesop's Activities.

TEACHER versus JUDGE: In some ways these educational functions are supportive (because students will be motivated to invest effort in what they know they will be rewarded in the lab-grading and its input into their overall course grade) but in other ways these functions are competitive which causes judging to interfere with teaching. When I know that I will be grading a certain aspect of a lab, it's difficult to be fair to all students — by providing equal information about a question that will be graded — and also provide optimal teaching. For example, if I see Joe and Sue (working as lab partners) do something wrong, should I ask them about it and (with some mixture of questions, hints, and explanations, aiming for optimal "coaching") help them understand what they were doing wrong and how to do it better? Or should I remain silent and let them continue doing it wrong so I can take points off during the lab report? As a judge, the "silence" option is appealing because it's fair to students who won't get my personal warning. But for Sue and Joe the result of silence is that they won't get feedback until a week later (when they see points lost on their lab report) and by this time their "teachable moment" is far in the past, and they won't think about the experience or learn from it. My instincts as a teacher are to teach NOW, during the lab while they're thinking, deciding, and doing, but if I'm also a judge this is more difficult and my effectiveness as a teacher is diminished.

APPENDIX

Discussion-Based Labs in a Home School
In conventional schools, public or private, assigning grades is usually an integral part of the process. But in home schools there is no need to assign grades, and there is less short-term focus on external motivations such as grades, so for a home-school student the emphasis can be on personally customized internal motivations. { But there can be long-term external motivations, such as eventually doing well in a conventional high school or college, or scoring high on standardized exams like the SAT or ACT in order to gain entrance into college. }
Of course, there is plenty of opportunity for interactive discussion, since the time schedule is more flexible, but some homeschool teachers/parents don't feel confident and comfortable about their ability to discuss the technical aspects of a science lab. One way to cope with this problem is to adopt a "facilitator" role and attitude; approach each situation as a learning opportunity for both student and teacher, instead of thinking that, in order to have a stimulating discussion, you must be able to "lead" the discussion as an expert.

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Teaching Scientific Method in Science Labs

( teach thinking skills with thinking activities )