[[alternative]]A study of the learning opportunities in laboratory teaching: From the perspective of social interaction and cognitive engagement

[[abstract]]Based on the concern for the equality of learning opportunities in laboratories, this study aims to explore the meanings of learning opportunities from a theoretical literature review, and to investigate the distributions of learning opportunities from the practical laboratory instruction. Considering both the nature of science activities and the psychological characteristics of the students in Taiwan, the study discussed meanings of learning opportunities from the perspectives of both science studies and Confucian ethics for ordinary people. Moreover, this study examined the distributions of learning opportunities by an empirical research to the junior high school laboratory, and searched for the significance of students’ interactions from the views of social interaction and cognitive engagement. Furthermore, the study designed a “three-step instruction management” to further understand the pattern of students’ learning opportunity shift alone with different laboratory activities. The subjects of the study are second grade junior high school laboratory classes. The study methods include both quantitative and qualitative approaches, which are expected to obtain a thorough understanding of the issue of learning opportunities. Findings from this study are summarized as follows: 1.Results from theoretical discussions show that science studies reveal rich and multiple implications, which provide a comprehensive and integrated framework for science education research. The framework constructed in this study, which shows the relation between science education and science studies, not only helps researchers to focus research questions effectively, but also provides different perspectives to diagnose and modify the questions. 2.In a science learning environment which involves groups and peers, the social interaction process includes talks of the learner to himself and to other people. From the viewpoints of procedural justice and distributive justice from the Western world, and the “The principle of favoring the intimate” and the “The principle of respecting the superior” from the Chinese world, this study has recognized the ways students manage learning resources during the interaction process and has identified the learning opportunities distribution among students of different status in the science laboratory. 3.During the interactions of students in the junior high school laboratory, students of higher status in class tend to hold better and more opportunities to learn, and are able to take advantage of learning resources in a more active way. On the other hand, students of lower status in class tend to take learning opportunities in a more passive way in processing the higher level thinking, and even tend to avoid learning resources. In the laboratory, the effect of the “The principle of respecting the superior” plays a prominent role in the interactions among students. 4.The “three-step instruction management” helps change the distributions of learning opportunities among students and improve students’ cognitive level in activity involvement. Besides, this instruction management is shown to provide multiple cognitive thinking chances for students to learn by experiencing playing different roles, in which the differences in learning motivation among students are minimized through self-fulfillment opportunities. However, regardless of the change shown above, the static status differences among students still remain.