ABSTRACT
The laboratory is a commonplace of science and school science. For more than a century, the laboratory has been uniquely associated with the pursuit of school science. The science curriculum is infused with images of students conducting rigorous laboratory-based experiments, mimicking the behaviour of real scientists in real scientific laboratories. ‘Hands-on’ has become a catch cry for science education, particularly over the past forty years, driving curriculum development (and facilities management) in the developed and developing worlds. And yet, notwithstanding the central place of the laboratory in school science, there is a growing corpus of research which calls into question both its value and effectiveness, and its connection to the enterprise of science (Hegarty-Hazel, 1990; Hodson, 1993; Lazarowitz and Tamir, 1994; Milne and Taylor, 1998; Tobin, 1990).
