Abstract

This piece of work titled “Difficulties Students Face in the Laboratory and its Effects on their Academic Performance” was guided by the following research; What are the standard laboratory equipment/materials that students need to do effective work? What are the difficulties faced by secondary school students in the laboratory? Who is responsible for the provision of laboratory equipment / materials for practical work? The instrument used to collect data for this research was the questionnaire.

The Case Study Research Design was used in carrying out this research and a sample size of 80 students was obtained using a proportionate stratified sampling technique. The data collected were analyzed using inferential statistics.

The findings revealed that learning materials, trained teachers and lack of laboratory technicians’, lack of appropriate equipments/materials, small laboratory size for many students are some of the difficulties the students face in the laboratory. Based on these findings, recommendations were to teachers, the schools and the Government. Lastly suggestions for further studies were made.

CHAPTER ONE

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

1.0 Introduction

In this chapter, we are going to look at the background of the study, statement of the problem, research question, purpose of the study, significance of the study, delimitation of the study, and definitions of terms.

1.1 Background of the study

Laboratory work is an established part of courses in chemistry in higher education. The originalreason for its development is in the need to produce skilled technicians for industry and highly competent workers for research laboratories (Morrell, 1969, 1972).

Today, the aims may be different, in that many chemistry first degree graduates are not employed as bench chemists in industry (Duckett et al., 1999) Statistics of Chemistry Education and the needs of research have inevitably become much more specialized as chemical knowledge has expanded. However, of greater importance is the need to see the ‘hands-on’ laboratory time as part of a wider process of learning. In this, there is a need to prepare students for their time in the laboratory as well as develop follow-up activities. Together, these may enrich and enhance the whole laboratory experience, and enable it to contribute more effectively to the overall learning of students in chemistry.

According to The Royal Society of Chemistry (2007), the first teaching laboratory in chemistry in Britain was established by Thomas Thomson in the University of Edinburgh in 1807. In 1819, he introduced this to the University of Glasgow, when he joined this University. In 1824, Liebig established a Chemistry Laboratory at the University of Giessen. This was a most exciting period of the nineteenth century. Liebig’s was the first institutional laboratory in which students were deliberately trained for membership of a highly effective research school by means of systematic research experiments (Morrell, 1969, 1972).

Laboratory classes then gradually developed over the next fifty years until eventually, in 1899, it came to be considered necessary that students should be allowed to carry out experiments for themselves. By this time, however, most schools in England had already adopted this way and regarded practical work as an essential requirement for science teaching in England (Gee and Clarkson, 1992).These were devoted to the teaching of skills directly used in industries and research (Letton, 1987; Johnstone and Letton, 1989; Khan, 1996).

Practical work at this time played a vital role in confirming the theory which was already taught in the classroom. However, some doubts also arose about the efficiency of teaching through practical work in chemistry. Towards the end of the twentieth century, more sophisticated alternatives had been introduced to facilitate effective learning in university laboratories. These included pre-laboratory experiences, films, video experiments, computer based pre-laboratories, post laboratory exercises and computer simulations Carnduff and Reid (2003)

Bennett and O’Neale (1998) proposed guidelines for the design of laboratory courses in chemistry in higher education in terms of the “logical sequence” of ideas, “opportunity for real investigations very early in the course” and “pre- and post-laboratory sessions which actively engage the students”.

These principles reflect the ideas of Denis Diderot, the French philosopher, who outlined three principal means of acquiring knowledge available to us: observation of nature; reflection; experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the results of that combination (Lester, 1966). All of these illustrate the need to decide what the aims are for using laboratory work in the teaching of chemistry in higher education.

The educational milieu today is believed to be an indispensable part of the society especially as it is the platform or the foundation on which students build up their capacity as intellectuals in the society. Within the school milieu are other structures where certain laws, facts, and concepts can be proven, such a structure is known as a laboratory. Science will be incomplete without laboratory work since laboratories have greater role to play on the academic performance of science students more precisely. Within the laboratory, students have their individual difficulties or challenge that they encounter.

Thus this research focuses on the difficulties students face in the laboratory and how these difficulties affect their academic performance. Laboratories are one of the characteristic features of education in the sciences at all levels. It would be rare to find any science course in any institution of education without a substantial component of laboratory activity. One of the main reasons to question the place of laboratory teaching is that laboratory programmes are very expensive in terms of facilities and materials, but also, more importantly, in terms of staff time (Carnduff and Reid, 2003).

Secondary school students’ reactions to practical work are often negative and this may reflect a student perception that there is a lack of any clear purpose for the experiments: they go through the experiment without adequate stimulation. It is important to think about goals, aims and objectives in the context of laboratory work. Laboratory work here is used to describe the practical activities which students undertake using chemicals and equipment in a chemistry laboratory. Of course, the word ‘practical’ can include other activities as well, and it is interesting to note its use.

Working documents like textbooks, laboratory manuals, and even the school might lack funds to hire an expert in the lab to give directories to students on what they should do and equally what they shouldn’t do which causes the student’s some difficulties in the laboratory. These difficulties have an impact on the school but the weight still lies on the students since it affects their academic performance immediately or in a long term basis and as a result aims at finding out these difficulties and attempting some proposals for solutions.

The main aim of introducing a lab schedule in regular teaching is to develop an understanding for the concepts taught in class lecture, by performing the experiments and self elucidation of the results. By this exercise the subject appears to be more real as the student experiences the concepts experimentally. This helps in developing the observational and manipulative skills of the student resulting in a better understanding of theory.

The laboratory course is generally designed in a manner so that class teaching is immediately recalled in the laboratory. This has been the approach till date and conventional Chemistry laboratories follow the same method. However the same approach is now having less impact on chemistry learning. The flaws in this conventional teaching are clearly visible. The connectivity between lectures and lab work is rarely brought to the notice of the student. The laboratory instructions are generally mechanical involving step by step instructions of age old procedures. The conventional chemistry laboratory instructions are generally expository where both teacher and students are aware of the outcomes of the experiments.

The practical approach to the subject thus becomes a spoon feeding approach, where the student works mechanically following a given procedure, with an aim of getting a set of result. Thus the laboratory becomes more result oriented with almost no emphasis on conceptual understanding. The words like ‘why’ and ‘how’ have lost their significance in performing experiments. Somewhere our education system at present is responsible for the pathetic situation of this so real subject.

The laboratory schedules are tight, restricted to fixed time. The facilities in the laboratory per student are minimal and the laboratory work evaluation is based more on manipulative skills than on interpretational skills of a student. Often scarcity of instruments in the laboratory results in lack of interest by students as they have to wait too long for their turn to get the instrument. The advance knowledge of the results of experiment makes students less honest in his practical work as he generally ends up in cooking the data with the fear of getting his file in red marked.

A greater emphasis is put on getting accurate results ignoring the precision. Students who lack the requisite theoretical framework for performing the experiments, for collecting data, will not know where to look or how to look in order to make appropriate observations for the success of the experiment.

However in today’s competitive world, and ongoing research in the chemistry and related areas, laboratory skills are gaining significance. Such conventional laboratories have been continued till date because this result is in efficient management of a large group of students in fixed time schedule as everyone has to do the same exercise with same instructions and thus less chaos in the laboratory without bothering teachers. However this has even more disastrous consequences-continuous loss of interest of students in experimental work as this promotes mass copying of observations where each student is expected to come with same result. This leaves no room for planning of experiments and hence innovations.

1.2 Statement of the problem

As a Cameroonian, the researcher observes that in Secondary education we have a variety of schools be they public, private or lay private. The performances in these schools differ greatly and this can be seen in the performances of students at the G.C.E A level results where there is a vast difference in the grades obtained. It has also been observed that better grades come from the science section of these categories of schools.

However, grades do differ within the science students due to the difficulties the students encounter in different sections of their studies. Most students often complain of the laboratory section and as a result, the researcher intends to find out the nature of these difficulties and to propose solutions that would ease these difficulties in the future.

1.3 General Research Question

What is the effect of laboratory work on students’ academic performance?

1.3.1 Specific research question

1. What are the standard laboratory equipment/materials that students need to do effective work?
2. What are the difficulties faced by secondary school students in the laboratory?
3. Who is responsible for the provision of laboratory equipment/materials for practical work?

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