Developing procedural knowledge in secondary education students

Abstract

Abstract This pilot study examines the development of procedural knowledge in high school students after being subjected to an innovative context-specific inquiry-based Teaching Learning Sequence (TLS) utilizing an open virtual AC electric circuit laboratory environment. Instruction aimed at developing students’ knowledge on experiment design and implementation through explicit teaching of scientific experimentation procedures. After instruction, students appear to have significantly advanced both their procedural and conceptual knowledge with a strong positive correlation between them. Thus, it seems that, when teachers enrich instruction with explicit teaching of the experimentation steps and metacognition-enhancing activities, students may develop their procedural knowledge along with conceptual knowledge.