Exploring Students’ Acquisition of Manipulative Skills during Science Practical Work

Abstract

This paper reports a study on students' science manipulative skills at the lower secondary school level. Students' manipulative skills can be explored by understanding their technical skills and their functional aspects of performing experiment. However, this paper will focus on students' technical skills in using basic scientific apparatus. Technical skills in this study refer to skill, abilities, and knowledge required for accomplishing a specific task in the laboratory. The skills include knowledge and skills needed to properly manipulate and operate scientific apparatus when executing a scientific task. It was found that students perform the skills in a certain pattern that reflects a form of hierarchy. This hierarchy can be used to aid science teachers in teaching manipulative skills. The paper will present the hierarchy of these technical skills and discuss these skills specifically from the perspective of lower secondary science teaching and learning. The results of this study have provided an insight on the issue of science manipulative skills that supports the importance of practical work.

Pre-service Physics Teachers' Recognition of Apparatuses Used in Mechanics and Electricity and Magnetism Experiments

“…The study focuses on the skill of recognizing lab apparatuses and equipment and knowing their function. This skill is considered as the basic technical skill in the hierarchical classification by Fadzil and Saat [22]. Yet, the results of the study indicate that pre-service physics teachers did not recognize the majority of the apparatuses and equipment frequently used in mechanics and electricity and magnetism experiments and did not know their functions.…”

“…al (2012) underline the necessity of including the technique of using science equipment when training teachers to use science experiments. According to Fadzil and Saat [22] the basis of lab skills is the ability of recognizing apparatuses and pieces of equipment and their functions.…”

“…What, then, are the basic technical skills that a teacher needs to conduct experiments? A hierarchical classification of technical skill levels by Fadzil and Saat [22] contributes significantly to answering this question ( Figure 1).…”

Do Laboratory Activities Contribute to a Contemporary Conception of Science in Initial Teacher Training?

“…In that way, LAs that emphasize learning through research and discovery, and encourages students to learn through the discovery of the phenomena, can contribute to citizens scientific literacy (Schwichow et al, 2016), not only in epistemic issues but also as scientific knowledge concerns, (Fadzil and Saat, 2017). Objective Despite the knowledge about fruitful ways of implementing LAs in science education, in the training of science teachers some educational centers continue to develop LA in a traditional way, without taking into account their integration with other formative activities of scientific education, such as problem solving (Peltier and Vannest, 2017;Jitendra et al, 2015;) learning by inquiry (Lazonder and Harmsen, 2016;Pedaste et al, 2015) or understanding of aspects about NOS (Lederman and Lederman, 2014).…”

A case study of direct assessment of students’ manipulative skills in chemistry practical: Perspective of lecturers

“…Despite of the growing number of studies indicated the importance of assessing students' manipulative skills in science practical, the use of direct assessment of students' practical skills in Malaysia is still very limited (Fadzil & Saat, 2017). Teachers preferred post-laboratory write-up because direct assessing students' practical skills in a large class was logistically impossible to be implemented (Wright et al, 2018).…”