Teaching Chemistry in a Reflective Way: Inquiring about the
inquiry-based laboratories in Chemistry in Arab and Jewish
high schools in Israel
Iyad M. Dkeidek
Advisors: Prof. Avi Hofstein and Dr. Rachel Mamlok-Naaman
Department of Science Teaching, Weizmann Institute of Science
Learning by inquiry has played an important role in recent years and is considered to be
an important element in scientific literacy. Combining inquiry experiments in the
chemistry curriculum for high-school students gives students opportunities, besides the
pleasure that they experience when dealing with materials or methods used to develop
research skills such as asking questions, making predictions, designing experiments,
collecting data, and drawing conclusions. The inquiry laboratory enables students to
learn actively. In order to realize this goal, students have to examine their knowledge
and rebuild it again during discussions with their peers in the working group.
The inquiry-type laboratory in chemistry – similar to Jewish high schools – is rapidly
spreading within Arab high schools in Israel. During the last few years, about 90% of
Arab high schools that choose to complete to 5 units in chemistry discipline taught
according to the inquiry laboratory.
Goals of the Study:
The main goal of the study is to assess the following variables between the Arab
students who learned according to a closed-ended-type laboratory and the open-endedtype laboratory in chemistry:

Students' perception of the laboratory learning environment.

Students' attitude toward laboratory work.

Students' ability to ask more and better questions from a cognitive point of view.
Another goal is to compare the results from the open-ended-type laboratory group
with their counterparts from the Jewish sector who learned according to the same
syllabus.
Methodologies:
In our current study we used quantitative and will use qualitative research methods.
The quantitative tools were mainly questionnaires; namely, student learning
environment inventory – actual (ASLEI) and preferred (PSLEI) forms, student attitude
toward laboratory work and questionnaires based on critical reading of adapted
scientific articles, whereas the qualitative research tools will be observations in inquirybased laboratories and interviews with students and teachers. The observations and
interviews will performed in both Arab and Jewish sectors in Israel.
Main findings:

The inquiry laboratory in chemistry (open-ended-laboratory-type) had improved the
Arab students’ actual perception of the laboratory learning environment in
comparison with the analytical laboratory in chemistry (closed-ended-laboratorytype) on one hand, but on the other hand there were significant differences in the
students’ actual perception of the laboratory learning environment between the Arab
and Jewish students.

On one hand, the inquiry laboratory improved the Arab students’ attitude toward
work in the chemistry laboratory, and on another hand students from the Arab sector
who learned according to the inquiry laboratory in chemistry demonstrated a higher
attitude toward laboratory work than their Jewish counterparts in Israel.

The inquiry laboratory in chemistry improved the Arab students’ ability to ask more
questions as a result of reading a revised scientific article than those who did not
learned according to this program, and also the cognitive level of the questions for
the inquiry group was also higher.

The ability to ask more and better questions as a result of reading a revised scientific
article was different between the Arab and Jewish inquiry students, not only in the
mean number of questions that each student asked, but also in the cognitive level of
the questions. This is explained by the differences cultural issues.
Dilemmas:

Most of the Arab students respect their teacher and do not have the ability to say
"bad things" toward their teacher, so will their answers during the interviews will
reflect their real opinion.

Will the classes that I select for observations, be good representatives to what is
going really in the field!
I have already analyzed the quantitative data - before collecting the qualitative data.