In Sweden, laboratory exercises are a mandatory part of the nature scientific subjects. As such, they must provide something which the regular, theoretical education does not.

This essay aims to investigate what abilities students are given the opportunity to improve during laboratory exercises in the latter part of the compulsory school and how they relate to the guidelines published by the Swedish National Board of Education. The essay does so through interviews with teachers, laboratory instructions as well as the national exam in biology, an exam, which is taken during the last year of compulsory school.

The essay found that the focus for teachers is to improve is the ability for students to correctly perform laboratory work. Arguably, the main that this ability is being improvedreason for this is that the laboratory exercises are the only non-theoretical exercises in the nature scientific subjects. As such, there is no other opportunity to improve practice the correct procedures for laboratory work.

However, not only the ability to correctly perform a laboratory exercise is improved. The ability to analyze and understand “the bigger picture”, communicative skills and critically view results or facts are all included in the laboratory exercises, and may improve because of it.

Finally, this subject could be further researched by expanding the study to include the entire compulsory school rather than only the latter part. The study could also be carried out in the upper secondary schools.