Inquiry-Based Learning in a Newly Designed Laboratory Course for Preservice Chemistry Teachers by Using a Construction Kit for Planning Experiments

Abstract

In this article, the development, implementation, and evaluation of a newly designed laboratory course (2 weeks all-day) for preservice chemistry teachers is described and discussed. For the second week of the course, new materials for planning experiments following an inquiry-based approach were developed and used. The students use guided inquiry tasks, a construction kit as scaffold for answering the questions in these tasks, and a gapped text to develop the experimental procedure. The scaffolded approach was chosen because, after only 1 week of a lab course on organic chemistry, with one organic synthesis each day, the students did not have sufficient experience for planning experiments completely on their own. By using the new materials, the students, who worked in small groups, were able to plan the experiments; most students’ choices were correct, as the evaluation of the collected students’ work shows. The students’ rating of the new approach was encouraging: The items regarding the procedure (planning phase in small groups) and guided inquiry tasks were rated in the range of agree to strongly agree. Therefore, using this approach to support students while planning experiments can be recommended.