Journal Article Review
Andrea Kennedy
9/24/15
SCE 4360
Practical Work in Science: Misunderstood and Badly Used. By: Johnathan Osbourne

This article tackles the issue of practical work or experimental processes within the science teaching field. Specifically, Osborne questions the usefulness and degree to which it is used.
Most science classes are taught in a lab and are only deemed valid if a hands on activity, lab, or experiment is used in teaching the lesson. In my opinion maybe this is because we need a measurable way to assess students' understanding and without a gradable lab report, this would be difficult. This leads to the main point in Osborne's article, that to understand and appreciate science we must also understand that science in itself is rooted in ideas, sometimes as Osborne states, "crazy" ideas. Osborne observes that most students when asked to name famous scientists, names such as Galileo, Einstein, Bohr, etc., are the main ones mentioned, all of which became famously known because they had a wild, crazy idea. He lists six "postulates" which have been determined to explain what students should learn in science classes. None of which include development of ideas, which he believes should be the basis for science teaching. His stand on practical work is that it is useful, but not in the way science teachers currently use it. Practical work has become the lesson in itself, rather than part of a larger lesson, and is being taught as a skill and method that should be perfected. Because of this, room for exploration and new ideas is eliminated, shutting out the very foundations of science. Practical work, particularly lab technique and experiments should be used as a real world connection only after ideas have been developed, discussed, thought over and explored. Then, rather than teaching to master a verified and planned out lab experiment student should be hands on in developing an experiment and methods to carry out a valid experiment to provide proof or disproof of ideas. In this way, students fully understand the basis for science, and make connections between the idea and the experiment to test that idea, while learning how to develop that experiment. In this way, practical work is much more valuable than simply teaching students steps to carry out during an experiment. I find this article extremely valuable as it brings into question, are we making the most of students' time and resources. Countless times, for science labs, especially chemistry, I have gone through the steps in a lab manual and carried out the experiment without fully understanding what exactly it was I was testing until the very end, if at all. I had to follow steps, follow the proper technique, and achieve a measurable outcome or variable, which my grade was dependent upon. My observations were not really my own but graded against observations that should be

made based on what had already been done and verified before. It's frustrating and takes away from the magic and awe of science. At the end of it all, new ideas were not seen as valued nor would I have been able to design my own experiment. It begs the question, what skill are we teaching? Are we teaching students to question the world and develop ways to test those questions or are we simply teaching to follow directions to achieve a predetermined outcome? I fully believe based on my own education we are teaching the latter and should not be.
Unfortunately, teachers are subject to protocols by governments and other entities which stipulate what must be taught and to a degree, how it must be taught. I will however keep the questions from this article in mind when tackling ways to present a new lesson and developing lesson plans. Students can learn to follow a certain technique and precious time should not be devoted to achieving a certain outcome, but the bigger determination of the grade should be, are they capable of questioning the world we live in? Can they informatively and respectfully engage in discussions about those ideas? Do they have the foundation and vocabulary to do that? Can they develop and carry out a test or experiment valuable enough to produce results for those ideas? Do they comprehend what is being obtained from the data and manipulations in an experiment? These are questions that I will ask myself as I review my lesson plan to make sure I am using practical work for what it was intended for as an inclusive approach rather than simply to grade whether my students can achieve the same results as countless other before them.

This article does an excellent job of questioning the use of practical work in the classroom; about eight pages of how it is misused. However, there is only 1-2 small paragraphs concerning the benefits for lab work. Osborne does not provide any details to the invaluable uses of this tool in the manner to which some topics in science simply need to be seen rather than explained. He also does not mention the idea of varying learning styles among students and how this is affected by overuse of lab work. There is an example of questions pertaining to a lab experiment and there are suggestions for how to overcome the overuse or misuse of practical work, but there are no specific examples of how to make the lab experiment more inclusive of the lesson. Osborne points out studies which have measured students understanding of experiments in which most have found they understand only to the degree of following the steps with no real deeper comprehension of concepts, although he does list some exceptions to these studies in which the opposite was found. What he fails to do is explain why; what was the difference between the two studies or the experiments? This would be interesting to know to see if there is some common denominator. I also found it strange that most of Osborne's quotes from others and references are from the late 1990's or very early 2000's. His article was written in 2015, so I would assume it may be more relevant to include some more recent sources.

Sources
Osborne, J. (n.d.). School Science Review number 357. Retrieved September 26, 2015, from http://www.ase.org.uk/journals/school-science-review/2015/05/357/