THE INDUCTIVE-DEDUCTIVE COMPARED TO THE DEDUCTIVE-DESCRIPTIVE APPROACH TO LABORATORY INSTRUCTION IN HIGH SCHOOL CHEMISTRY*
The objectives of science education today in clude, in addition to the acquisition of the funda mental facts and principles of science, the abil ity to use the methods of science in the solution of problems and the inculcation of scientific be havior. The investigation reported here assumes all these aims of science to be important and co ordinate. The primary concern was that of eval uating ways of achieving these objectives. 1 Spec ifically, the purpose of this tudy was to compare through experimental evaluation the learning of students instructed in such a manner as to stress the inductive-deductive approach with the learn ing of students instructed through the use of th? more commonly found deductive-descriptive ap proach in the laboratory as it contributes to the objectives of high school chemistry. Comparisons were made with respect to the relative attainment of each of four specific objec tives and the total achievement involving all of these four: