A systematic review of research on laboratory work in secondary school

11,771 records screened; 39 studies retained for integrative analysis

Secondary-school science laboratory work, international; publications 1996-2019.

Integrative mixed-methods systematic review with an explicit and reported search: 11,771 records screened down to 39 studies for integrative analysis over a 24-year window. The screening ratio is the point — the field publishes prolifically about laboratory work and produces almost nothing that survives inclusion criteria for a synthesis of learning outcomes. The review is a synthesis of a heterogeneous literature, not a meta-analysis; no pooled effect size is produced, which is itself informative about what the underlying studies look like.

Recorded primarily as SEARCH EVIDENCE. A systematic review of secondary-school laboratory work covering 1996-2019 screened 11,771 records and retained 39 studies for integrative analysis. Twenty-four years of international research on the most expensive routine activity in school science yields fewer than two dozen syntheses-worthy studies per decade, and the review produces no pooled effect estimate because the underlying literature does not support one. The review's substantive contribution is a framework for what laboratory work is FOR (content learning, procedural/practical skill, and epistemic understanding of how science works) and the observation that studies overwhelmingly examine enactment, teacher practice and student perception rather than causal learning gains. Read this file alongside Oliveira & Bonito 2023: the question 'how many well-identified K-12 causal studies of practical work exist?' is answered by these two search records, and the answer is a single-digit number.

Not applicable — a review of the literature's structure, not an effect estimate.

Complementary to Oliveira & Bonito 2023 (Frontiers in Education), which ran an independent search over 2011-onward open-access literature and retained 53 studies, of which only 1 was a randomised trial. Two independent searches, two decades apart in method, reach the same conclusion about the thinness of causal work.