PRESENTATION OF LABORATORY SESSIONS FOR SCIENCE SUBJECTS IN SLOVENIAN UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOLS

Among Slovenian upper secondary school science teachers a study was conducted about the implementation of laboratory work in Science teaching. One of the specific goals was to acquire preliminary data about the status of laboratory exercises in teaching Biology, Chemistry and Physics. Answers were received from 64 Biology teachers, 64 Chemistry teachers and 63 Physics teachers (about 40% of Slovene secondary school Science teachers). The differences in attitudes towards and performance of laboratory work among teachers of different Science subjects are small. It can be concluded that teachers of all three subjects have generally positive attitudes towards laboratory work. The differences occur in the way laboratory work is performed. Not so positive are the findings that many of the exercises are presented to the students as demonstrations, and an expository style is preferred. In the future, efforts should be made to transform expository labs into inquiry- and problem-based laboratory work.