Striving to learn to do chemistry in the laboratory: epistemic conation as a fundamental driver of inquiry

Abstract

Learning to do chemistry in the laboratory involves dispositional, motivational, and volitional factors that sustain and direct inquiry. These aspects have been theorised as constituting an incentive dimension that serves as a fundamental driver of inquiry, and they are often conceptualised as grit, perseverance, motivation, and similar notions emphasising individual characteristics or personality traits in students’ striving to learn. While concepts like grit and perseverance treat learning motivation as stable individual traits, epistemic conation captures the dynamic, knowledge-specific intentions that emerge when learners actively seek, evaluate, and apply scientific understanding—shifting focus from who the students are to how they intentionally engage with epistemic practice. Based on a series of studies within the context of laboratory education in pharmaceutical analytical chemistry, which is also a part of a large, recently concluded project, the paper unfolds how epistemic conation manifests in students’ collaborative and individual practices during laboratory experiments, highlighting how it encompasses conative dispositions, motivational factors, goal orientations, and volitional strategies. Through a mixed-method approach involving 30 students in the focus groups’ data and 43 students in the laboratory discourse data, we show that the social aspects of key constructs, such as perseverance, epistemic motivation, experimental goal orientation, and active help-seeking, are crucial in student learning and competence development in the laboratory. These findings suggest that effective laboratory instruction requires assessing how perseverance and motivation emerge through group dynamics rather than evaluating students’ perseverance or motivation as a personal trait, and instructors would need to assess how these qualities emerge and function within group dynamics and peer interactions. Implications for research and practice are presented.