Reflecting on practical work

In this section, you are invited to think about your current views and experiences of practical work and to explore why we do it.

There are three activities.

1. Where are you now? This activity will get you thinking about why and how you currently use practical work.
2. What the research says: do you agree? This activity looks at some key findings from research into practical work and asks whether your experience leads you to the same conclusions. An overview of the key sources that provided the background, content and structure for this project and serve as additional reading is provided in Underpinning research.
3. What is the purpose of practical work? This activity asks you to think about a range of typical practical activities using instruction sheets from the Practical Biology, Practical Chemistry and Practical Physics websites, and to identify the key reasons for conducting those practicals.