Teachers’ aims of laboratory work in secondary school in Sweden

Introduction Laboratory work and practical work are common and significant components of science education. Teachers are expected by tradition, culture and curriculum (e.g. Boud, Dunn and Hegarty-Hazel, 1989; Lunetta, 1998; Skolverket, 1998) to involve labwork as a part of science education. Swedish National Curriculum (Skolverket, 1998) renders objectives involving for example development of students’ scientific skills, knowing how to plan and perform investigations and to critically analyze results. Two of the most important goals with labwork are to act as a link between theory and practice and to offer laboratory skills. There is an ongoing discussion about the efficiency of labwork for learning science (Hult, 2000; Tiberghien, Veillard, Le Maréchal, Buty and Millar, 2001). Based on my experience as a science teacher, there is a need to alter labwork. Individual teachers play a significant role in labwork conducted in science teaching and thus affects learning outcome from labwork. In this sense, teachers have to present comprehensive curriculum aims to motivate and engage students in meaningful labwork (Leach and Scott, 2003). The study presented here deals with teachers’ choices which depend on their views of science and learning in addition to e.g. practical and institutional constraints. By interviews and text analysis related to their own science teaching, secondary school teachers’ views were explored. The study was designed to describe and increase knowledge and understanding about teachers aims of laboratory work, e.g. their pre-labwork decisions. Some questions are: What choices are made by teachers, and how are they motivated? Do teachers’ aims with labwork correspond to teachers’ descriptions of labwork? How do teachers’ choices affect students’ prerequisites of learning from labwork? The purpose is to enlighten teachers’ labwork aims and objectives, motifs and priorities. Further studies in the PhD-project will explore what implications teachers’ aims have in reality and how students interpret these aims.