The goals for lab instruction are receiving critical attention in the physics education community due to multiple reports and research findings. In this paper, we describe a theoretically-motivated scheme to evaluate instructional lab curricula and apply that scheme to three implementations of an electricity and magnetism lab curriculum. The scheme has three components: (1) that critical thinking is a context-dependent process for using critical thinking skills to make evidence-based decisions, (2) that to make decisions one must have agency, and (3) that deliberate practice can be used to effectively teach critical thinking skills. We use this scheme to evaluate the lab instructions for three sets of instructional labs for their use of deliberate practice for teaching critical thinking skills through varied opportunities for students to exercise agency in making decisions about experiments. Our analysis shows that our curricular design did target the experimentation-focused critical thinking skills, but did not strongly align with theoretical recommendations for deliberate practice. The results provide suggestions for improvements to curricular design. For curriculum developers, instructors, and researchers who intend to teach critical thinking in the context of experimental physics, this scheme serves as a tool to create and evaluate lab instructions in terms of the ways in which specific skills are supported through deliberate practice.

中文翻译：

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评估教学实验室对故意练习的使用，以教授批判性思维技能

由于有许多报告和研究发现，实验室教学的目标在物理学教育界受到了至关重要的关注。在本文中，我们描述了一种理论上可行的方案来评估教学实验室课程，并将该方案应用于电和磁实验室课程的三种实施方式。该计划包含三个组成部分：（1）批判性思维是使用批判性思维技能做出基于证据的决策的上下文相关过程；（2）决策必须具有代理人的能力；（3）故意实践可以用于有效地教授批判性思维技巧。我们使用此方案来评估三套教学实验室的实验室教学指导，以便他们通过各种机会让学生行使代理权来做出实验决策，从而利用故意练习来教授批判性思维技能。我们的分析表明，我们的课程设计确实针对了以实验为中心的批判性思维技能，但是与针对有意练习的理论建议并不完全一致。结果为改进课程设计提供了建议。对于打算在实验物理学的背景下教授批判性思维的课程开发人员，讲师和研究人员，该计划可作为一种工具，用于通过故意练习来支持特定技能的方式来创建和评估实验室指导。