Practical work has taken a leading role in science teaching, particularly since the 1960s. Its goals are mainly oriented toward the development of sensitivity and taste for the study of physical and ...natural phenomena, bringing students closer to the daily reality experienced by researchers working in these areas of knowledge, while promoting educational success. However, these purposes have not always been achieved so, over time, limitations to the way that practical work has been developed have also been identified. In order to recognize the current state of the art on the development of the practical work in the teaching of sciences, a systematic literature review was designed, especially focused on the definition of the concept of practical work, its advantages, evaluation methodologies, and the criticism/limitations attributed to its implementation. To this end, four databases and one aggregator were used, to identify 53 international scientific publications. Analysis of this
corpus
allowed the identification of 8 categories associated to the concept of practical work, 5 categories associated to its advantages, 6 categories with the types/methodologies of evaluation and 5 categories associated with the limitations of this methodology. (From this analysis) it is concluded that most authors considers that the main idea integrative idea of the concept of practical work should be the manipulation of materials in practical activities (hands-on style), and the main advantage of this methodology comes from the fusion between the development of practical skills and the conceptual understanding (minds-on). In the evaluation methods, the context, procedures and specific instruments are favored and the main limitation pointed to this methodology is that the way practical work is implemented, is often not in agreement with the methods and techniques used by scientists and researchers.
This study aimed to determine whether dialogic-practical work could improve students' epistemic beliefs about physics. A quasi-experimental pretest and post-test research design was applied on 91 ...secondary school students. Data was collected using a 30-item epistemic beliefs questionnaire. A statistically significant difference in epistemic beliefs was observed between dialogic-and recipe-based practical workgroups,t (76) = 5.83, p = .001, d = 1.32. This suggests that students who engage in dialogic-practical work develop better knowledge about physics than students who simply follow given recipes. The implementation of dialogic-practical work contributes to the development of students’ epistemic beliefs about physics.
•This study aimed at determining whether dialogic-practical work would improve students' epistemic beliefs about physics better than the recipe-practical work.•A quasi-experimental pre-test and post-test research design were used on 91 secondary school students in Bahir Dar town, Ethiopia.•Dialogic-practical work resulted in a significant difference in epistemic beliefs about physics compared to recipe-based practical work.•This study provides useful insight for physics teachers about what dialogic-practical work is and how to apply it.
The development of Internet technologies and new ways of sharing information has facilitated the emergence of a variety of elearning scenarios. However, in technological areas such as engineering, ...where students must carry out hands-on exercises and laboratory work essential for their learning, it is not so easy to design online environments for practicals. The aim of this experimental study was to examine students' acceptance of technology and the process of adopting an online learning environment incorporating web-based resources, such as virtual laboratories, interactive activities, and educational videos, and a game-based learning methodology. To this end, their responses to an online questionnaire (n = 223) were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The study was based on the technology acceptance model (TAM), but included and assessed other factors such as perceived efficiency, playfulness, and satisfaction, which are not explained by the TAM. Our results confirm that this extension of the TAM provides a useful theoretical model to help understand and explain users' acceptance of an online learning environment incorporating virtual laboratory and practical work. Our results also indicate that efficiency, playfulness, and students' degree of satisfaction are factors that positively influence the original TAM variables and students' acceptance of this technology. Here, we also discuss the significant theoretical and spractical implications for educational use of these web-based resources.
•Hands-on exercises and laboratory work are essential in technological areas.•Web-based environments allow to integrate and manage online practical work.•There is a lack of studies focusing on students' acceptance of virtual practical work.•TAM results to be a good theoretical tool to understand virtual lab’ acceptance.•Perceived satisfaction, efficiency and playfulness influence positively on TAM model.
Practical work must be assessed in a way that will promote the development of key skills necessary for destinations beyond the physics school laboratory. This paper reports on a study which sought to ...find out teachers’ views and practices on the assessment of Advanced Level (‘A’ level) physics students’ practical work skills. Individual interviews and focus group discussions were conducted to get physics teachers’ views and practices on practical work skills assessment. The views of physics teachers were that the current method of practical work assessment used by the Zimbabwe Schools Examination Council (Zimsec) is not efficient in encouraging students to develop a variety of practical work skills as students concentrated on mastering presentation and analysis skills at the expense of other crucial practical work skills like equipment manipulation, observational, planning and designing. The study recommends that alternative methods of practical work assessment that integrates both direct assessment of practical work skills (DAPS) and indirect assessment of practical work skills (IAPS) should be used to ensure valid and reliable assessment of practical work skills of ‘A’ level physics students.
This study aimed to examine the effects of dialogic-practical work on secondary school students‘ mechanics' achievement. It also examined whether the students‘ mechanics achievement would vary with ...achievement levels. A quasi-experimental pre- and post-test research design was used. The study participants were 91 students from two secondary schools in Bahir Dar town, Ethiopia. The treatment group conducted dialogic-practical work and the comparison group carried out recipe-based practical work. A 25-item Mechanics Achievement Test was used for data collection. A paired- and independent sample t-tests were performed to analyze the data. It was found that there was a statisitcally significant difference in mechanics achievement between the dialogic-and recipe-based practical work groups, t (76) = 7.80, p < .001, d= 1.76. It also indicated that the dialogic-practical work resulted more improvements in mechanics achievement of the different achievement levels as compared to the recipe-based practical work. This suggests that students who engaged in dialogic practical work enhanced their mechanics achievement more than students who simply follow prescribed recipes. It is important to raise physics teachers’ awareness about the benefits of dialogic-practical work to enhance students’ mechanics' achievement.
The teaching of sciences has long been associated with practical work; an instructional tool that is believed to be effective in terms of both promoting learning as well as making the teaching of ...sciences enjoyable. However, empirical evidence on its effectiveness as a teaching method and whether it has any affective value for undergraduates is still lacking, when it has been deemed as one of the costliest aspects of science education. This paper reports on the preliminary findings of a mixed-methods case study conducted at a British university to examine the perceived aims of practical work as well as the effectiveness of practical work on conceptual understanding and motivating undergraduates according to the academic staff of a life sciences department. For the qualitative data presented here a questionnaire was administered to the academic staff who, along with Year 1 and Year 2 undergraduates, were interviewed and also observed during practical work classes. The preliminary findings showed that the perceived aims of practical work by the academic staff vary across years, while the observations revealed two types of lessons in which the importance of providing theoretical scaffolds during experiments so as to help undergraduates in linking concepts and theories with observables was prominent.
In today's computer information is more developed, the combination of Internet and television makes people's daily entertainment more abundant. There is no doubt that radio and television is one of ...the main ways to enrich people's spiritual world. We can think that the research on the professional and practical working mode of radio and television director has great practical significance for the future prosperity of China's Radio and television field and the satisfaction of people's spiritual and cultural needs. The innovation of working mode under the studio system can reflect our current practical innovation training methods from the side1. At the same time, innovation is also the main goal of our research on the actual working mode of radio and television editing and directing major.
This study reports the barriers faced by Transnational Education (TNE)-students when completing practical work in the UK, having transferred to the UK for their final year of study as part of a ...chemistry degree. Self-identified barriers these students faced included the following: recall of information, difficulties writing the technical reports required for assessment, different educational cultural norms between China and the UK, especially in relation to health and safety, and a lack confidence using English, in particular with the technical language. It was noticed by both participants and researchers that there was minimal interaction with the domestic students and prevalent use of Chinese within the TNE-students’ social group, which may have created a ‘cultural enclave’. The results from this study have been used to derive a number of recommendations for practice for TNE-programmes that contain a significant practical element.
Around the world, there have been curricula reforms involving the incorporation of the inquiry‐based teaching and learning strategy in secondary school science education in general and in practical ...work in particular. Research in inquiry‐based practical work (IBPW) has focused, for example, on aspects of the strategy itself, on teacher professional development, and on classroom teaching and learning based on the strategy. However, the question of the extent to which teaching practices linked to the implementation of practical work are actually inquiry‐based, was still to be answered. To draw on the answer to this question to inform professional development practice and research, we focused on the case of physical sciences classrooms in two resource‐constrained South African schools. In this regard, we used a conceptual framework based on the Interconnected Model of Teachers' Professional Growth and including a framework of teaching practices. In the data collection, we used a multimethod case study approach and to analyze the data, we combined the inductive and deductive approaches in thematic analysis. The results show that in the initiation, planning, and classroom implementation phases of practical work, many of the teaching practices of participants were inconsistent with inquiry‐based teaching and learning, although some other practices were consistent with this type of teaching and learning. At the same time, some of the consistent practices were at a rather low level of implementation. We have discussed the theory‐, practice‐, and research‐based implications of these results, in relation to the implementation of IBPW in resource‐constrained physical sciences classrooms in South Africa and internationally.
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