General Chemistry Students' Goals for Chemistry Laboratory Coursework.

Little research exists on college students’ learning goals in chemistry, let alone specifically pertaining to laboratory coursework. Because students’ learning goals are linked to achievement and dependent on context, research on students’ goals in the laboratory context may lead to better understanding about the efficacy of lab curricula. This study characterized undergraduate students’ learning goals for general chemistry laboratory coursework by recording video of students completing laboratory experiments and interviewing the students about their experiences. The data was analyzed utilizing the framework of learning domains as described by Human Constructivism. Students were found to be primarily guided by affective goals, such as the desire to feel good by completing the requirements and getting done early. This stood in conflict with any psychomotor or cognitive goals they held concurrently. The data provide suggestions for reform of the general chemistry laboratory curriculum.

[1]  Paul A. Kirschner,et al.  The laboratory in higher science education: Problems, premises and objectives , 1988 .

[2]  Stacey Lowery Bretz,et al.  Faculty Perspectives of Undergraduate Chemistry Laboratory:: Goals and Obstacles to Success , 2010 .

[3]  A. Viera,et al.  Understanding interobserver agreement: the kappa statistic. , 2005, Family medicine.

[4]  Vincent N. Lunetta,et al.  The Laboratory in Science Education: Foundations for the Twenty-First Century , 2004 .

[5]  C. Dweck,et al.  Clarifying achievement goals and their impact. , 2003, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[6]  Stacey Lowery Bretz,et al.  What Faculty Interviews Reveal about Meaningful Learning in the Undergraduate Chemistry Laboratory , 2013 .

[7]  Matthew B. Miles,et al.  Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Sourcebook , 1994 .

[8]  M. Maehr,et al.  Achievement Goals and Student Well-Being. , 1999, Contemporary educational psychology.

[9]  J. Fleiss.  Measuring nominal scale agreement among many raters. , 1971 .

[10]  Markku Niemivirta,et al.  Self-Regulated Learning: Finding a Balance between Learning Goals and Ego-Protective Goals , 2000 .

[11]  Stacey Lowery Bretz.  Novak's Theory of Education: Human Constructivism and Meaningful Learning , 2001 .

[12]  Rachel Mamlok-Naaman,et al.  The laboratory in science education: the state of the art , 2007 .

[13]  J. Novak,et al.  The interplay of scientific epistemological views, learning strategies, and attitudes of college students , 1993 .

[14]  Richard T. White,et al.  The link between the laboratory and learning , 1996 .

[15]  N. Reid,et al.  The role of laboratory work in university chemistry , 2007 .

[16]  Kenneth Tobin,et al.  Research on Science Laboratory Activities: In Pursuit of Better Questions and Answers to Improve Learning , 1990 .

[17]  Jaclyn J. Stewart,et al.  A Process for Developing Introductory Science Laboratory Learning Goals To Enhance Student Learning and Instructional Alignment , 2013 .

[18]  N. Brickhouse,et al.  Teachers' Beliefs About the Nature of Science and Their Relationship to Classroom Practice , 1990 .

[19]  Marcy H. Towns,et al.  Development, Implementation, and Analysis of a National Survey of Faculty Goals for Undergraduate Chemistry Laboratory , 2013 .

[20]  T. Bipp,et al.  Goal orientations predict academic performance beyond intelligence and personality , 2011 .

[21]  Eric Malina,et al.  Learning Chemistry in a Laboratory Environment , 2002 .