• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.660-673
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• 2006

There have been many attempts to determine the value and the role of school laboratory experiment, but it seems hard to find consensus among these attempts from the perspective of education. This difficulty seems mainly due to disagreement on the concept of education, which has caused an instrumental attitude considering the school laboratory only as a means of developing science or pursuing various functions of school. However, the Endogenous Theory of Education (ETE), which claims education as 'a form of life', has recently paved the way for laboratory experiment to be justified as an opportunity of 'educooperation' allowing students to experience the intrinsic values of education in the medium of science. According to this theory, it is not the detailed practicals but the whole context where the laboratory activity is situated that matters in revealing the inherent educational phenomena. Through this new perspective, I observed two biology laboratory classes in a high school and analyzed the pattern of teacher-student and student-student interactions. Some meaningful educooperation was found in students' chattering, which has been traditionally considered as merely noise in the classroom, rather than in teacher-student interactions. This study discusses the reasons for these findings in detail and culminates in suggesting ways for accentuating the educational aspect of school laboratory activity.