Compendium of Science Demonstration-Related Research from 1918 to 2008

******* This compendium highlights a ninety-year history of science education focused on how demonstrations have been used for the express teaching and learning of science at the high school, college and university levels. It is presented in three (a) Experimental Studies Comparing the Lecture Demonstration Method and the Individual Laboratory Method of Teaching Science (1918-1989); (b) Further Types of Demonstration-related Comparison Studies (1958-2008); and (c) More Recent Demonstration-related Non-Comparative Studies (1980- 2008). Organization of the research in this manner revealed that an interest in investigating this type of research by science educators had and continues to evolve. This work was constructed from an intense and nearly exhaustive review of the research.


While the authors believe that it can be misconstrued that the scholarly literature and empirical research are one in the same, we can show that it is necessary to make a distinction between the two sources of information. Upon review of the scholarly literature and empirical research on the demonstration topics, a salient outcome is that these two bodies of information are only loosely corroborated. From this point on we use the terms literature and research when referring to each of these bodies of information.


To begin, we describe studies comparing the effectiveness of the methods of lecture demonstration and the individual laboratory. The very early attempts (1918-1964) to determine the superiority of the lecture demonstration method over the individual laboratory method of teaching science, and vice versa, remained unresolved through the mid-1960s. Cunningham (1946) suggested several reasons for the inconclusive nature of the results reported by researchers of lecture demonstration and individual laborat

Kathleen Fadigan, Ed. D. (Temple University, 2003) is presently an Assistant Professor of Science Education at Pennsylvania State University and a Senior Research Associate with the Equity Studies Research Center at Queens College, City University of New York. She has taught science education methods at Temple University and Pennsylvania State University. Her research interests include informal science education, gender equity in science education, and teacher/student understandings of the nature of science and evolution.