A Lab Guiding Tool for a Life Science Experiment that Possibly Provides Teachers' Tacit Knowledge:Evaluation of Its Efficacy for Auto-tutorial Support in Upper Secondary Schools

抄録

A lab guiding tool that provides teachers' tacit knowledge was developed to outline the procedure of a life science experiment, and its effectiveness was examined. At first, some lab instructions and teaching plans that had been already published were collected for an analysis of the actual state of teaching practices. It was founded that (1) these lab instructions focused on experimental procedures and did not contain the knack that teachers accumulate from their experiences (tacit knowledge) and (2) an environment supporting students in reconfirming teacher's instructions had not been established. The author thus analyzed teachers' tacit knowledge required for students' practice on “Making preparations for microscopic observation.” The author made said knowledge into a transmittable form by using numeric representation and images, assembled it into a new instructional tool (a lab guiding tool), and developed a learning environment in which students can reconfirm the instructions. The new lab guiding tool improved the success rate and reduced the number of discarded specimens. The high success rate could be attributed to good ideas generated by the information that students had obtained from the new lab guiding tool. The reduction in the number of discarded specimens was due to less wasted motion and students' failure in performance.