A critical look at introductory laboratory instruction

One of the goals commonly mentioned for introductory science laboratory work is for the student to become better equipped to cope with concepts in the lecture classroom as a result of practical encounters with those concepts in the laboratory. Studies have shown that no such correlation exists between laboratory work and lecture classroom work. Traditional beliefs hold that laboratory work provides an awareness of the empirical roots of science and creates a positive scientific attitude. However, there exist equally effective but less costly and time‐consuming ways of doing this. The laboratory provides a place where students can become familiar with experimental equipment and techniques, but it is not the only place where this process can occur and indeed, the process is not occuring very well in the laboratory. Laboratory work may offer students the opportunity to carry out inductive open‐ended investigations and there is a trend towards making more experiments of this type. Unfortunately most beginning...