Skills-focused lab instruction improves critical thinking skills and experimentation views for all students

Instructional labs are fundamental to an undergraduate physics curriculum, but their possible learning goals vast with limited evidence support any particular goal. In this study, we evaluate the efficacy of different and structures on students’ critical thinking skills views about experimentation, using extensive database survey responses from over 20 000 students at 100 institutions. Here, show that focused developing experimentation improve compared reinforcing lecture concepts. We further demonstrate positive impacts skills-based concepts-based these outcomes across gender race or ethnicity. Our analysis also shows activities decision making communication explain one-half one-third effect views, respectively, while modeling have only a small performance.Received 12 January 2022Accepted 14 March 2022DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.18.010128Published by American Physical Society under terms Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution work must maintain attribution author(s) published article’s title, journal citation, DOI.Published SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Professional TopicsLower studentsPhysics Education Research