THE MANIPULATIVE SKILLS OF GRADE 8 ST. PETER STUDENTS: BASIS OF
LABORATORY REMEDIATION
FT Capuno, MC Plando, “The Manipulative Skills of Grade 8 St. Peter Students: Basic for
Laboratory Remediation.” International Journal of Biology Education, 2015, Vol.
4,No. 2.
The article, the manipulative skills of the grade 8 St. Peter students: basis for
laboratory remediation.” by FT Capuno and MC Plando seeks to address how manipulative
skills of the students interact in the decision made by the school itself. The research problem
being addressed is whether or what the respondent's/students mastery level of the following
manipulative skills in which are handling, measuring, cleaning, and storing apparatuses.
It is clear from the abstract of the article that this is no simple issue. In fact, the article
is confusing for the first couple of paragraphs. The author starts by saying the explicit
introduction showing the scientific skills and reflective manner of the scientist’s, however
conflict emerges when an individual’s moral values are different from such scientific and
manipulative skills. What can make the skills more complicated are the motivations of the
teacher, also the student’s inability to perceive the future consequences of their decision.
Author influence, outside the student scientific and manipulative guidelines, is the
existence of school context. These different domains generally “lay down their standards or
have the good or bad outcome (p. 6-8).” This manipulative, scientific skill can help an
individual determine their decision in handling the apparatuses, but at the same time
complicates the idea of the mastery of each individual. The school that a teacher is a part of
may also complicate the scientific skills and may provide a difficult decision as immoral. The
author also acknowledges the tendencies of the highest level. The author sees this as a good
impact and writes that by collecting out the data of the individuals in the section St. Peter,
and as they have “an active role in the scientific, manipulative skills and interest.
To such an inverse issue the author sums the research well by saying that students
having a low level of mastery such as the score that has shown because some are lacking
competence in manipulative skills and they require urgent improvement (p. 6). An individual
can improve and focuses on the procedures, but ultimately there are ways these individuals
can improve relevantly. The author writes “that the grade eight (8) students are not
knowledgeable enough on the functions of common laboratory apparatuses.”(p. 8) and, while
this is excellently laid out the data the author ultimately admits that there is always room for
improvement on the students/individuals mastery level.
This is a good concept, for how the problems of multiple skill-set should be handled.
However, this does not appear to be any concrete guidelines for carrying this out. In other
words, this sounds great on paper and it does translate as easily to everyday life. There is
research in the traditional senses for this article and the author does include many examples
of work written by those who have written on this subject in the past. The author cites people
like Ameh, C, Baybee, R.W., Chiappeta, and many more on the reference page. These are
good, well-known examples and authors and I think it adds a great deal of credibility to the
piece as a whole.
Overall, this article is not very straightforward in the beginning and it’s not
until the 4th page that you realize where the article needs a new, more concise introduction.
Once the reader gets to the good examples that are relevant to the everyday life of an
individual student, a good portion of the article was already past. The author did put up a
good, well-written article with important data for the teachers and students. The piece, when
taken as a whole, is relevant and very convincing in the introduction but starts slow and never
lays out a concrete way of approaching this complex article.