The results of an earlier empirical research study on modifying ‘step-by-step’ instructions to practical activities requiring one or more steps of the experiments to be designed by students initiated a longitudinal study to investigate the effectiveness of the approach for younger students and over a period of time. The longitudinal study that followed took the form of a four year research project that began in September 2016. Over 900 students have been involved. All were 12–13 years old in the beginning of the study. Each year they spend six lessons carrying out practical activities using worksheets we provide. This paper reports the findings of the first year, when the participating classes were allocated to one of three groups. Group 1 was the control group. Students simply followed the step-by-step instructions. Groups 2 and 3 were experimental groups. Group 2 students not only followed the same instructions, but also had to complete experimental design tasks on paper. Group 3 students followed the same instructions, but one or more steps were incomplete and students were required to design these steps. The impact of the intervention on the students’ experimental design skills, disciplinary content knowledge and attitude toward chemistry is measured by structured tests. After the first school year of the project it was clear that the type of instruction only had a weak significant positive effect on the results of the Group 2 students’ disciplinary content knowledge. No significant effect of the intervention could be detected on the changes in the students’ grades and attitudes toward the subject, which only seemed to depend on the ranking of their schools. This paper provides the interesting details of the results of the first year (pilot) of the research and discusses changes to the approach that have been made for the remaining three years of the project.

中文翻译：

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向学生介绍实验设计技能

一项较早的实证研究的结果是，对“分步”指令进行修改以适应实际活动，要求学生设计一个或多个实验步骤，从而开展了一项纵向研究，以调查该方法对年轻学生及以上学生的有效性。一段时间。随后的纵向研究采取了始于2016年9月的四年研究项目的形式。已有900多名学生参与其中。在研究开始时，他们都是12-13岁。每年他们花六节课使用我们提供的工作表开展实践活动。本文报告了第一年的调查结果，当时参加的班级被分配到三个小组中的一个。第一组是对照组。学生只需按照分步说明进行操作即可。第2组和第3组是实验组。第二组学生不仅遵循相同的说明，而且还必须在纸上完成实验设计任务。第3组学生遵循相同的说明，但是一个或多个步骤不完整，要求学生设计这些步骤。干预对学生的实验设计技能，学科内容知识和化学态度的影响通过结构化测试来衡量。在项目的第一学年之后，很明显，教学类型仅对第二组学生的学科内容知识的结果产生了微弱的积极影响。没有发现干预措施对学生的成绩和对学科的态度的变化有明显的影响，这似乎只取决于他们学校的排名。本文提供了研究第一年（试点）结果的有趣细节，并讨论了在该项目的剩余三年中对方法进行的更改。