The Expectations of Teachers and Students Who Visit a Non-Formal Student Chemistry Laboratory
Nicole Garner 1, Ingo Eilks 2 *
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1 Insititute for Science Education, University of Bremen, Germany2 Institute for Science Education, University of Bremen, Germany* Corresponding Author

Abstract

Background:
Non-formal student laboratory environments for primary and secondary school science education have become a major trend in the German educational arena in recent years. These non-formal student laboratory environments are thought to offer unique experimental learning experiences that often cannot be realized in daily school routines. The biggest challenge for successfully operating non-formal education is to carefully and firmly link outer- and inner-school learning.

Materials and methods:
To better facilitate this linkage this paper describes a study providing insight into students’ and teachers’ expectations of a non-formal student chemistry laboratory. Over a period of three years, 461 students and 37 teachers participated in a written survey.

Results:
The results clearly show that students and teachers have similar expectations when visiting non-formal laboratory learning environments.

Conclusions:
The main foci addressed here concern the improvement of personal attitudes and the intensification of practical learning experiences.

License

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Article Type: Research Article

EURASIA J Math Sci Tech Ed, 2015, Volume 11, Issue 5, 1197-1210

https://doi.org/10.12973/eurasia.2015.1415a

Publication date: 25 Aug 2015

Article Views: 2379

Article Downloads: 1242

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