New Perspectives in Science Education

The laboratory has long been considered the best setting for science teaching and learning for many reasons ranging from the opportunity to develop skills in handling materials and equipment, to achieving the goal of familiarizing students with scientific reasoning and the way science is done. From the perspective of scientific competences development, the capacities that should be highlighted in the teaching of experimental science are more clearly identified, such as the pertinent application of scientific knowledge, involvement in research to address problems, as well as proposing, developing and sustain solutions to them. The usual practice in teaching laboratories is mainly focused on following established procedures that lead to concrete results that allow the student to be assigned a grade. However, this way of working provides very few opportunities for the development of scientific skills in students. The current situation of health emergency has caused unavoidable changes in the way experimental science is taught and, with this, a wide variety of alternatives has been opened that can promote the development of the scientific capacities of students. This work reports the result of monitoring the development of skills for scientific practice, without considering manual skills, in a virtual laboratory course in general chemistry for first-year students at a Peruvian university. These skills were evaluated by means of a rubric that considers the progress achieved in four levels. The results were compared with those obtained by students from a previous cohort who had the same course under the standard modality. Chi square statistic was used, and it was verified that there were significant differences in the achievements obtained by both groups, being these favourable for the group of students that followed the virtual modality.

Keywords: scientific skills, science education, instructional design, assessment.

References: 

• Pedrinaci, E. (coord.), Caamaño, A., Cañal, P., y Pro, A. (2012): 11 Ideas Clave: El desarrollo de la competencia científica. Barcelona: Grao.
• Hofstein, A. (2004). The laboratory in Chemistry Education: thirty years of experience with developments, implementation, and research. Chemistry Education: Research and Practice, 5 (3), 247-264.