An analysis of laboratory manuals for upper secondary school: their potential for teaching students about the nature of scientific inquiry

This study presents an analysis of laboratory manuals from one Swedish upper secondary school, with a focus on their potential for teaching students about the nature of scientific inquiry (NOSI). The sample consisted of 73 manuals encompassing 137 investigations in Biology, Physics, and Chemistry. Laboratory manuals are here understood as the written instructions given to students to direct their work when doing laboratory exercises. The analytical framework is based on a distinction between laboratory exercises as an instructional strategy and the scientific investigations they may include as a learning objective, part of learning about NOSI. It also includes a new way of specifying the autonomy given to students during laboratory exercises. The results corroborate previous studies that indicate generally low levels of autonomy given to students in laboratory exercises, but data illustrating how students’ autonomy varies over time is novel. Few manuals include explicit learning objectives or researchable questions, and students are never asked to formulate their own researchable questions. No example of hypothesis testing is found, and no information about assessment is included in the manuals. The results are discussed in relation to what this means for student learning about NOSI and how this potential can be better actualised.