ABSTRACT
This chapter reports on a study concerning students’ transformation of knowledge in undergraduate laboratory physics, focusing on the relationship between manuals, lab experiments and report. The study involved a change of learning design from a traditional ‘cook-book’ format to an inquiry-based one. In the cook-book learning design, students had to undertake clearly specified procedures and calculations with the aim of having physics concepts and theories illustrated to them empirically. In the inquiry-based one, they themselves had to pose a research question within a field of physics, design lab experiments to investigate this question and carry out the experiments. The first section introduces the rationale behind the study. The second section explicates the setting of the study and the research methodology. The third section presents the results, focusing on the positioning and subject-focused knowledge forms displayed in the lab manuals, the reports and the lab experiments for the two learning designs. In conclusion, it is suggested that implicit expectations on the part of both students and instructors as regards students’ laboratory work and knowledge documentation may have influenced the utilisation of the inquiry-based learning design decisively and adversely.
