The aims of teaching laboratories is an important and ever-evolving topic of discussion amongst teaching staff at teaching institutions. It is often assumed that both teaching staff and students are implicitly aware of these aims, although this is rarely tested or measured. This assumption can lead to mismatched beliefs between students and teaching staff and, if not corrected for, could lead to negative learning gains for students and become a source of frustration for teaching staff. In order to measure and identify this gap in a manner that could be readily generalised to other institutions, a single open question – ‘What do you think the aims of doing a practical chemistry course are?’ – was distributed to students and teaching staff at two Australian universities and one UK university. Qualitative analysis of the responses revealed that students and teaching staff held relatively narrow views of teaching laboratories, particularly focusing on aims more in line with expository experiences (e.g. development of practical skills or enhances understanding of theory). Whilst some differences were noted between students at the three institutions, the large amount of similarities in their responses indicated a fairly common perception of laboratory aims. Of the three groups, academics actually held the narrowest view of teaching laboratories, typically neglecting the preparation of students for the workforce or the simple increase in laboratory experience the students could gain. This study highlights gaps between the perceptions of students and teaching staff with regards to laboratory aims alongside revealing that all three groups held relatively simplified views of teaching laboratories.

中文翻译：

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“您认为进行实用化学课程的目的是什么？” 比较三所大学的学生和教职员工的观点

教学实验室的目标是教学机构中教学人员之间不断讨论的重要话题。通常认为，尽管很少对此进行测试或衡量，但教学人员和学生都暗中意识到了这些目标。这种假设可能导致学生与教职员工之间的信念错位，如果不加以纠正，可能会给学生带来负面的学习成果，并成为教职员工沮丧的根源。为了以易于推广到其他机构的方式测量和识别这种差距，有一个开放的问题–“您认为进行实用化学课程的目的是什么？” –已分发给两所澳大利亚大学和一所英国大学的学生和教学人员。例如实践技能的发展或对理论的理解）。虽然注意到这三所学院的学生之间存在一些差异，但他们在回答上的大量相似之处表明他们对实验室目标的认识相当普遍。在这三组中，学者实际上对教学实验室的看法最狭窄，通常忽略了为劳动力做好准备的学生，或者只是简单地增加了学生可以获得的实验室经验。这项研究突出了学生和教职员工在实验室目标方面的看法之间的差距，同时揭示了这三个小组对教学实验室的看法相对简化。