Several goals have priority as part of the general education program,
namely, students' skills in the areas of writing, reading, mathematics,
sciences, and critical thinking, the latter at least insofar as
it relates to how one evaluates evidence. The structure, reasoning,
and community nature of the scientific enterprise have within
them convincing ways to develop these essential skills.
There are several considerations that need to be addressed in
any decision about laboratories.
1) Experimental science is a community activity. It is rare in
the real world that any experiments are done alone. The more usual
events are multi-person collaborations that involve planning,
gathering materials, executing, interpreting the ranges of uncertainties
and the limits of the data, stating the meaning of the results,
and sharing all of it for validation by a wider community of interested
people.
2) Doing science involves a set of skills that rest on practice
and performance. Studentsindeed, anyone up to and including scientists
themselveslearn better the meaning and limits of scientific models
and concepts by having experience with the measurements, or from
close contact with actual experimental groups. Structured, guided
experience with feedback is valuable in the learning of any skill,
as has been discovered in foreign language groups, piano and dance
practice, written composition, and experimental measurements and
their interpretation. It is highly improbable that most students
can learn to these skills by reading a textbook or listening to
a lecture. At the same time, within a semester, students can gain
some experience and skills with physical and biological models,
measurements, and categories, and with their limits.
3) Laboratories are excellent places to practice and train some
aspects of critical thinking. One can learn the meaning of acceptable
evidence, and experience the tentativeness of conclusions drawn
on individual measurements. The laboratory experience also can
demand accurate reporting and the writing of reports in acceptable
form.
4) Biological and physical science laboratories at the introductory
levels are different and complementary approaches to the real
world. Although theses sciences tend to merge at molecular levels,
the approaches and activities of the biological sciences and physical
sciences are much different at the macroworld level. Both adhere
to criteria and standards of critical thinking that are enormously
valuable in today's world.
5) Quantitative reasoning is an essential part of work in the
sciences. Statements about what happens are meaningless without
information about quantitative measurements. The laboratory allows
students to have a stake in this by generating their own data,
manipulating it mathematically, and comparing it with others,
as does the wider scientific community. They learn how to assess
their own work and that of others.
In summary, students often simply do not know how human beings
ever "got" to present scientific and mathematical knowledge,
how a community of interested people creatively craft the scientific
view of the world.. They need the skills and criteria discussed
above. The laboratories in the physical and biological sciences
offer avenues to these important general skills. Students need
these kind of laboratory experiences as part of their intellectual
lives.