Abstract:

Research on Learning and Teaching in the School Science Laboratory has grown substantially in the past few decades [1-2]. So that the practical activities carried out in the laboratory allow students to acquire the basics of the scientific process to learn science. In this regard, students must participate actively, and their role should not be limited to verifying the laws and theories learned in previous courses. On this subject, Millar [2, p.20] stated that "practical work to develop students' scientific knowledge often requires students to make links between two domains of knowledge: the domain of objects and observables, and the domain of ideas." Unfortunately, many studies revealed that students encounter many conceptual difficulties in learning science, despite the increasing use of practical work in laboratories [3]. Also, these works note that the activities proposed in textbooks need to consider students' misconceptions widely published in the international literature review. This research is in line with work on laboratory development for science learning. Thus, we will present the results of a teaching strategy experimented with 85 elementary pre-service teachers from Quebec. The strategy approaches we have developed take place in three stages. First, the students completed a multiple-choice questionnaire (MCQ) on static electricity composed of eight questions. Each deals with a given statement, and they had to indicate whether it was false or correct by explaining their answer choice. Thus, we did not ask them open questions, such as: "What is static electricity for you?" To formulate the questions, we referred to Piaget's clinical method, which consists of questioning a person based on an experimental protocol. The students had to refer to their knowledge. In a second step, they conducted a hands-on laboratory to verify their spontaneous answers to the MCQ. The purpose of this step was to bring them to confront their spontaneous answers and to be able to change the explanation put forward if their anticipated answer was different from the observations resulting from the experiment carried out. Also, this step intended to make them see the limits of recourse to experience since specific questions could only resolve with appropriate scientific knowledge.

The third stage's purpose was to review the activities of stages 1 and 2. In this step, we use three activities:
1. Group discussion (interaction between student and the teacher);
2. They viewed videos about electrostatics, and
3. presentation by the teacher on scientific concepts related to experiments. The results indicate that evolving their initial erroneous conceptions into scientific explanations is possible.

References:
[1] Shana, Z.J., and Abulibdeh, E.S. (2020). Science practical work and its impact on students’ science achievement, Journal of Technology and Science Education, 10 (2), 199-215.
[2] Millar, R. (2004). The role of practical work in the teaching and learning of science (pp. 1-24). Paper prepared for the Committee: High School Science Laboratories: Role and Vision, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC.
[3] Métioui, A., and Trudel, L. (2019). THE DESIGN OF A CONSTRUCTIVIST HANDS-ON LABORATORY: QUALITATIVE STUDY OF SIMPLE ELECTRICAL CIRCUITS (pp. 3384 3389). In Proceedings of ICERI 2019 Conference 11th-13th November 2019, Edited by L. Gómez Chova, A. López Martínez, I. Candel Torres, IATED Academy Seville, Spain.

Keywords:

Hands-on-laboratory, static electricity, pre-service teachers, conceptual conflict.