How much guidance can a teacher give on lab reports?

[Aaron Jones]

I'm concerned that my teacher is telling us too much for a lab report. On a lab he's assessing for design, he gave us instructions that were incredibly detailed, and when I asked him what we, the students, were designing, he said we had to figure out things such as "how many grams of NaOH go into your solution to make it 0.1 M." (For those of you not in chemistry, this is a basic calculation. This would be like a physics lab when the only designing you do is "calculating the time it takes for an object to fall from 2 meters without air resistance" when the entire lab is about determining how much air resistance affected an object on the way to the ground with your teacher telling you 1. calculate how long it would take for an object to fall 2 meters without air resistance. 2. drop object. 3. calculate the difference between the acceleration due to gravity and the actual acceleration. 4. calculate force of air resistance using F=ma)

This is Chemistry SL. Also, for our lab report, he's telling us exactly what to write (almost, he says

"1. Begin your report by writing the equations involved along with a brief summary of how you will solve the problem.

2. Accurately record and label raw data. Turn the raw data sheet in with your report"

... etc.)

I feel like this will cause him to get moderated too much and hurt everyone's scores a lot. Is he allowed to tell us all this?

Edited November 9, 2011 by Aaron Jones

[dessskris]

actually at my school our teachers give us general guidelines on how to write an IA, tips and stuff like that you know. sample lab reports, etc.

last year (IB1) they were willing to read a first draft first and then tell us what to change and improve for our fnial drafts. but those were informally assessed (only for school report grades, not sent for IB moderation). this year there's no more drafting and no help at all. we have to do it on our own. the formal assessment will be based on the works we did in this year (with no teacher guidance) so it is fair.

perhaps your teacher is doing the same thing, so you get to know how to write first and then once you're fluent, they will let you do it on your own. perhaps.

[Tony Stark]

I'm concerned that my teacher is telling us too much for a lab report. On a lab he's assessing for design, he gave us instructions that were incredibly detailed, and when I asked him what we, the students, were designing, he said we had to figure out things such as "how many grams of NaOH go into your solution to make it 0.1 M." (For those of you not in chemistry, this is a basic calculation. This would be like a physics lab when the only designing you do is "calculating the time it takes for an object to fall from 2 meters without air resistance" when the entire lab is about determining how much air resistance affected an object on the way to the ground with your teacher telling you 1. calculate how long it would take for an object to fall 2 meters without air resistance. 2. drop object. 3. calculate the difference between the acceleration due to gravity and the actual acceleration. 4. calculate force of air resistance using F=ma)

This is Chemistry SL. Also, for our lab report, he's telling us exactly what to write (almost, he says

"1. Begin your report by writing the equations involved along with a brief summary of how you will solve the problem.

2. Accurately record and label raw data. Turn the raw data sheet in with your report"

... etc.)

I feel like this will cause him to get moderated too much and hurt everyone's scores a lot. Is he allowed to tell us all this?

Not if that IA is being assessed for design. However, if he is telling each student this info, but they're all doing different experiments, while it's still malpractice, the IBO likely wouldn't know. Alternatively, it could be that these IAs will only be sent to the IBO for DCP and CE, and you'll do separate Design IAs.