On the path to improving our teaching: reflection on best practices in teaching chemistry

The pressures of constantly eroding support and a perception of reduced student intellectual involvement have given rise to a need to evaluate how we teach our first-year chemistry subjects. Students will no longer study what we say just because we say, and so we are forced to reconsider what we teach and why we teach in the way we do. Chemistry laboratories are expensive, time-consuming, and involve inherent safety risks that could be avoided by excluding labs. This paper describes the reflective process our team has followed, with the intent of providing the best possible learning experience, to decide if or how chemistry laboratories are important to the learning of chemistry. The process reported by this group may serve as a generic example of how teachers can reflect on their practice as a team.