| The focus of this study was an attempt to bring balance to the laboratory approach in a high school chemistry course. Traditional labs have been identified as "cookbook" labs where skills and facts may be reinforced, correct data is verified, but higher order processing may not be required. A greater number of teachers have been turning to inquiry labs also known as "open ended" labs to assess and encourage critical thinking skills, as well as the understanding of concepts within their classrooms. This project was based on the idea that a balance of informational, process and inquiry-based experiments was necessary since not every student is entering high school chemistry is ready to do inquiry-based experiments. My goal was to build a transition from traditional process labs to inquiry labs that would build a confidence in students to pursue higher order thinking and problem solving, while encouraging a greater understanding of concepts. Students need this transition to develop strong foundational skills. The grouping of experiments from lower level cognitive skills to higher order thinking skills is known as scaffolding. This grouping would give teachers the assurance that their students were capable of such open-ended inquiry experiments. |
