Digitala lösningar på praktiska problem : En studie av kemilärares sätt att hantera laborationsundervisning under en snabb omställning

Sammanfattning: Within science education, and chemistry in particular, laboratory work is fundamental. The traditions of including laboratory work in chemistry education is a way to make the concepts of chemistry apprehensible, the aims and goals of laboratory work related to chemistry education are therefore well defined. With digital technology, Information Communication Technology, (ICT tools), the traditional hands-on laboratory experience can be transformed to a nontraditional, digital laboratory experience. The use of digital laboratory work in education is well debated, yet both positive and negative aspects can be identified. As a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers around the globe faced new challenges as much of the teaching abruptly had to be converted to online teaching. Due to the nature of the chemistry subject, one major challenge chemistry teachers faced was how to coordinate practical laboratory work with the new regulations. The unexpected transition from classroom education to online education can thus be identified as in a way teaching habits were challenged. The purpose of this study is to investigate the adaptations chemistry teachers had to make to the laboratory education as the hands-on laboratory experience rapidly had to be translated to a digital laboratory experience. Data was collected by conducting interviews with 10 chemistry teachers in upper secondary education and a thematic analysis was used to identify how, and in what way, teachers used ICT tools to coordinate their current teaching with the new restrictions. Data was analyzed by applying a transactional approach inspired by John Dewey’s transactional perspective of habits as well as a didaktik perspective to study the complexity in actions and how decisions concerning the laboratory work were made. The findings suggest that ICT tools could be used in a variety of ways but were not necessarily easily translated between practices, thus choices regarding the aims, goals and methods used in the online classroom differed from the decisions teachers usually made. Many teachers were able to use ICT tools in a sufficiently productive way to keep the laboratory work functional, however this was not a smooth transition for everyone and the need to adapt the activity to make it useful was in many ways decisive. Their responses to the changes varied and the differences in basic skills in how to use ICT tools were prominent. Regarding the didactic relations, teachers also noticed a change in behavior and the students’ attitudes towards the laboratory work. The changes caused teachers to reevaluate their approach to a digital laboratory experience in order to make the teaching functional, hence both the habits of planning and teaching had to be reconsidered.