Science laboratory learning environments in junior secondary schools

The Science Laboratory Environment Inventory (SLEI), an instrument developed specifically to assess the environments of science laboratory classes, was adopted in this study. SLEI was first developed in Australia (Fraser, McRobbie & Giddings, 1993) and it was field-tested and validated in six countries namely the US, Canada, England, Israel, Nigeria, and Australia with a sample of over 5447 students in 269 classes (Fisher, Henderson & Fraser, 1997; Fraser & McRobbie, 1995). The instrument was also adapted in Singapore to study 1592 grade 10 chemistry students (Wong & Fraser, 1996) and cross-validated in Brunei Draussalem with 644 grade 10 chemistry students (Riah & Fraser, 1998). In Korea, the English version was translated into Korean and the questionnaire was administrated to 439 high school students from three streams, viz. humanities stream, science-oriented stream and science-independent stream (Lee & Fraser, 2002). Validity was established and similar patterns in the Western countries were replicated in these studies.

In developing the SLEI, Fraser, McRobbie and Giddings (1993) identified five dimensions which were considered important in the unique environments of the science laboratory class. These dimensions are (1) teacher attitudes and behaviour, (2) content and nature of laboratory activities, (3) instructional goals, (4) social variables, and (5) management such as availability of space and materials (Hofstein and Lunetta, 1982). All these dimensions of science learning in laboratories are generic and common at both senior and junior secondary levels. In Hong Kong, the science learning environments in junior and senior secondary classes are similar. Such similarity can be observed from the physical set-up of the laboratories, which are built with the same design and are under the same management such as staffing and equipment pool. The other similarity is that the central curriculum development agency, the Curriculum Development Council, advocates the same pedagogical approaches to teaching and learning science at both junior and senior secondary levels in Hong Kong (CDC 1998; CDC 2002a; CDC 2002b; CDC2002c). Students will develop scientific knowledge and science process skills, namely, observing, classifying, measuring, and experimenting skills through inquiry process. In view of the above, the SLEI instrument is likely to be applicable in junior science classes in Hong Kong although it was originally developed and validated for senior secondary science classes elsewhere. In Taiwan, Tsai (2003) has already extended the use of SLEI in junior secondary science classes. The instrument has proved to be rather robust to its wide range of applicability to different academic levels, different science disciplines as well as various school systems in different countries.

The SLEI questionnaire consists of five scales namely Cohesiveness, Open-Endedness, Integration, Rule Clarity, and Material Environment (Fraser, McRobbie & Giddings, 1993). Each scale is measured by seven items. For each item, a five-point scale is used to describe how often the item happens in the laboratory classes, ranging from (1) “Almost Never”, (2) “Seldom”, (3) “Sometimes”, (4) “Often”, to (5) “Very Often”. In this study, a Chinese version of the SLEI was adapted for use in junior secondary science classes. There were two forms of the questionnaire, one described the students’ perceptions of the actual laboratory environment; the other one was the students’ perceptions of the preferred environment. The full set of the questionnaire can be found in Fraser, McRobbie, & Giddings (1993) to which the item numbers are referred hereafter in this paper. The descriptions and sample items of each scale are listed in Table 1.

Table 1. Scale description and sample items of the SLEI

Scale	Description	Sample item
Student Cohesiveness	The extent to which students know, help, and are supportive of, one another.	Members of this laboratory class would help one another. (preferred) (＋)
Open-Endedness	The extent to which the laboratory activities emphasize an open-ended, divergent approach to experimentation.	In our laboratory sessions, different students collect different data for the same problem. (actual) (＋)
Integration	The extent to which the laboratory activities are integrated with non-laboratory and theory classes.	The topics covered regular science class work would be quite different from topics dealt with in laboratory sessions. (preferred) (－)
Rule Clarity	The extent to which behavior in the laboratory is guided by formal rules.	There are few fixed rules for students to follow in laboratory sessions. (actual) (－)
Material Environment	The extent to which the laboratory equipment and materials are adequate.	The laboratory is an attractive place in which to work. (actual) (＋)

(＋) Items are positively worded.

(－) Items are negatively worded and are scored in reverse manner.

In adapting the SLEI to local junior secondary science classes, it was translated into Chinese. The translated version was reviewed by two secondary science teachers. Four students were invited for an interview to go through every item in the questionnaire. Modifications in the wording were made to preserve the original meaning in the original English version and to fit into the common usage in the local context. Five reversed-worded items (items 3,5,15, 20, 25) read awkward in translated version were changed back to positive-worded items, reducing the total number of reversed-worded items from 13 to 8.