Abstract
This study aims to uncover the needs of eight-year grammar school students during laboratory work in chemistry. The qualitative analysis of 24 open questions was done according to the Grounded theory. 740 questionnaires from students at the age of 12 to 15 were compared to 544 from students 16 to 20 years old.
Everyone participated in some of the 94 laboratory works (LW) prepared by one teacher. There were 19 topics in the form of LW.
Results showed similar needs of all. Older students had better ability to explain their suggestions than younger.
The satisfaction with LW depends on thenumber of students in laboratory, understanding, organisation, equipment, frequency of LW, time, information and experiments. Many students declare that they would like to be creative and to have autonomy.
Surprisingly, they are afraid that the problem-based learning without detailed instructions would be too difficult and dangerous to try.