The science classroom is often portrayed as a neutral, utilitarian space: a place where students mix chemicals, conduct experiments, and make observations in pursuit of objective knowledge. Yet when we step into a laboratory, we enter not just a physical environment, but a carefully constructed cultural space shaped by tools, materials, behaviors, and expectations. The laboratory is a place where scientific knowledge is produced, but also a place where scientific identity is performed. In this unit, students will explore how the material environment of the lab shapes what we do, and, in turn, how we understand science itself.
At the center of this exploration is the concept of object agency. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines agency as “the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power; a person or thing through which power is exerted or an end is achieved.”1 By extension, object agency refers to the idea that material things possess a form of power or influence that shapes human behavior, experiences, and social interactions.2 This concept challenges the common assumption that objects are passive tools controlled entirely by human intention. Instead, it recognizes that objects act within human contexts by enabling, constraining, or directing action. Informed by Jane Bennett’s theories of thing-power and body materialism, we can understand that materials like glass are not inert but rather vibrant actors with their own vitality, capable of affecting human bodies and behaviors in subtle yet profound ways.3 For example, the fragile nature of a glass beaker does not simply exist to be handled; its vulnerability demands careful attention, influencing how students move, how they conduct experiments, and even how they think about safety. Similarly, the design of lab goggles shapes the wearer’s vision and awareness while navigating experimentation by guiding their posture, attention, and even sense of self as a participant in scientific work. In this way, the lab is not only a place where students learn science, but also a space where the objects themselves participate in shaping scientific identity, influencing how students see, feel, and act within it.
By materializing the laboratory and bringing attention to the physicality and design of lab tools and spaces, this unit invites students to think critically about the environments in which science takes place. The presence of glass, flames, and specialized instruments co-produces both the culture of safety and the culture of scientific seriousness that defines the laboratory setting. What does it mean to wear gloves before handling a substance? How does the temperature resistance of a ceramic triangle allow us to heat substances safely? What behaviors are expected, and why? These are not just questions of safety or function, but of cultural meaning; they reveal how material objects guide, constrain, and enable scientific practice.
In rethinking the laboratory as a cultural space, students will begin to see their classroom as a living environment shaped by history, design, and human interaction. Drawing on scholarship from material culture studies and science and technology studies, this unit approaches lab equipment not just as instruments for learning science, but as agents with the power to influence how students move, act, and think. By attending to the agency of lab objects, students will gain insight into how materials communicate expectations, create boundaries, and embody the values of scientific work. This awareness will help them develop both practical lab skills and a reflective understanding of what it means to think—and act—like a scientist.
Glass as Material and Metaphor in the Science Lab
“With such horrible materials, the chance of scientific breakthroughs was nearly impossible. Without good glass, science was blind.” —Ainissa Ramirez, American Scientist, 2022
Glass is one of the most iconic and omnipresent materials in the modern science laboratory. From beakers and graduated cylinders to microscope slides and petri dishes, glassware is often seen as a neutral, utilitarian tool that holds, measures, or displays. But when we attend closely to glass as both a material and a metaphor, it becomes clear that this substance carries a dense constellation of physical properties, behavioral expectations, historical lineages, and symbolic meanings.
Glass has long been associated with transparency and observation, values that are foundational to the scientific method itself. Its inertness, durability, and ability to be precisely molded make it an ideal medium for experimentation. These features have earned it a privileged status in laboratories since antiquity.4 As a material, glass reflects scientific values of clarity and control, but it also demands care: glass is fragile and often expensive. Its very presence in the lab disciplines behavior, encouraging students to handle materials with caution and respect. The symbolic weight of glass extends beyond the lab bench. Culturally, glass is a signifier of science itself. Films, television, and textbooks often depict laboratories as dense with complex glass apparatus: distillation columns, condensers, flasks bubbling with colored liquids (see Figure 1). These “glass sculptures,” as one historian has described them, serve as visual shorthand to signal that “real science” is happening.5 Even when these tools are not in use, their presence communicates authority and legitimacy.
Figure 1: Scientist Working in a Laboratory, circa 1945.
Captured on a glass negative, this photograph from the History Trust of South Australia shows a female scientist surrounded by glassware engaged in laboratory work. The image highlights the material environment of the lab, the role of women in mid-20th-century science, and the use of glass both as laboratory equipment and as a medium for photography.6
Glass is also an artifact of historical and technological development. Glassmaking dates back over 4,000 years, with roots in ancient Syria and Egypt. The invention of glassblowing and the blowpipe transformed what was possible, leading to the first hollow vessels in the 1st millennium BCE.7 Early alchemists in Hellenistic Egypt and later in medieval Europe prized glass not only for its chemical neutrality but also for its visual permeability. Maria Hebraica, an early Jewish alchemist from the 1st century credited with inventing the tribikos and bain-marie, noted that glass enabled experimenters to “see” processes unfold without disruption.8 This visual access remains central to experimental chemistry today. Over time, centers of innovation shifted across the globe from Aleppo to Constantinople to Venice and, eventually, to Jena, Germany.
It was in Jena in the late 19th century that Otto Schott, a chemist-turned-glassmaker, revolutionized laboratory science by inventing borosilicate glass.9 With its exceptional resistance to heat and chemicals, Schott’s glass transformed laboratory instrumentation. Collaborating with physicist Ernst Abbe and instrument-maker Carl Zeiss, Schott created specialized glassware that met the demands of precision optics, measurement, and chemical experimentation. Their work marked the birth of scientific glass as a standardized, high-performance material technology.10 A study of twenty famous experiments found that fifteen would have been impossible without glass tools, including Humphry Davy’s 1807 discoveries of potassium and sodium and Antoine Lavoisier’s 1777 discoveries of oxygen and conservation of mass.11 Schott and his collaborators’ innovations in borosilicate glass were thus critical to the rise of modern chemistry and biology.
As a metaphor, glass invites students to reflect on visibility and vulnerability. It allows us to see, but also reflects our gaze. It offers access to the inner workings of matter but also breaks if mishandled. In this way, glass becomes more than a vessel; it is a participant in the culture of science. It teaches us that tools are never just tools: they carry histories, meanings, and affordances that shape the very nature of scientific inquiry. Glass does more than contain chemicals; it defines the boundaries between the experimental system and its surroundings. This boundary is not merely physical but conceptual. It demarcates what is being observed, manipulated, or measured from everything else that is not.
In chemistry and physics, systems are often simplified as discrete, closed entities. Reactions take place “in” a beaker, solutions are heated “in” a flask, and measurements are taken “in” a graduated cylinder. But these systems are only bound by the presence of glass. The transparency of glass permits observation without disruption; its chemical inertness ensures it will not interact with the substances inside; and its rigidity maintains a consistent volume and shape.12 These properties allow scientists to define a domain of inquiry or an “inside” space where known quantities interact under controlled conditions. What lies outside the glass is often treated as noise or contamination, even though it, too, is part of the world being studied.
Figure 2: Chemical Laboratory in Paris, circa 1760s. This depiction of one of the earliest scientific laboratories highlights a structured workflow with various instruments, furnaces, and glass vessels, reflecting the organized and collaborative nature of early scientific practice.13
Glass’s evolution from slag byproduct to artisanal craft to industrially engineered precision material parallels the evolution of science itself. Over centuries, the transformation of glass into an essential substrate for observation, measurement, and manipulation underscores how materials do not merely support science; they shape what we know and how we come to know it. But glass also enables something else: collaboration (see Figure 2). Since it standardizes the conditions for observation and measurement, glassware allows scientists across the world and across time to compare results, replicate experiments, and build upon one another’s work. A volumetric flask in New Haven functions in the same way as one in Nairobi or Kyoto. In an experiment, groups of students in our chemistry classes measured the density of water and calculated their percent error using identical balances and glass graduated cylinders. When one group achieved a perfect zero percent error, it became clear to the students that the accuracy of the glassware, not just the skill of the scientist, made their findings comparable across space and time. This material consistency makes knowledge portable, verifiable, collectable, and reproducible.
In the classroom, helping students think critically about glassware can deepen their awareness of how scientific knowledge is constructed through shared tools, communal practices, and embedded values. By foregrounding glass as both a substance and a symbol, this unit invites students to encounter the lab not as a static space of facts, but as a dynamic environment of interaction, collaboration, interpretation, and identity formation.14 Science happens not only in the mind or in the textbook, but in the hands, through materials, and with others.
Using the Lab to Teach Material Agency, Safety, & Scientific Thinking
In this unit, the science classroom is reimagined as more than a backdrop for activity; the high school laboratory is a dynamic site of sensemaking, identity development, and cultural practice. Students do not simply follow procedures or verify known results. Drawing from archaeological and material culture studies, students engage with lab equipment as tools, texts, and objects that are “mute” yet encoded with social, historical, and scientific values.15 Students must figure out how and why lab tools function, how material choices influence safety and design, and what these materials reveal about science as a human endeavor.
The NGSS (Next Generation Science Standards)-aligned concept of sensemaking is central to this approach. According to Illuminate Education, sensemaking is the process in which learners “actively engage with the natural or designed world, wonder about it, and then develop, test, and refine ideas.”16 Sensemaking ties together science and engineering practices (SEPs) and requires that students not only do science but use science to answer authentic, phenomena-based questions. In this unit, we aim to shift the classroom dialogue from “What are you learning about?” to “What are you trying to figure out?”
The National Science Teaching Association recommends grounding lab-based learning in four key elements of sensemaking.17 Science as a discipline is deeply material. Science learning happens in relation to things, and those things influence what and how students come to know:
- Phenomena: Students begin with authentic objects and materials as the anchor of exploration—graduated cylinders, goggles, lab coats—not just as tools, but as phenomena in their own right.
- Science and Engineering Practices: Students engage in constructing explanations, developing and using models, and obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information. These SEPs promote not just skills, but identity and ownership of science.
- Student Ideas: Through structured discussion, observation, and reflection, students bring lived experiences and intuitive understandings into dialogue with scientific concepts.
- Disciplinary Core Ideas: Students connect their observations of lab objects with core chemistry and physical science ideas, including properties of matter, thermal conductivity, and chemical safety.
This approach aligns with recent shifts in science education away from rote procedure and toward culturally responsive pedagogy. As Millar (2002) argues, hands-on activity in the lab is often assumed to guarantee learning, but it must be paired with minds-on strategies to be truly effective.18 Practical work should be carefully chosen and designed to build conceptual understanding and procedural fluency.19 The goal is for students to make meaningful links between their observations and the scientific ideas they represent. This approach to the classroom laboratory honors both the cognitive and cultural complexity of lab work. By leveraging the cultural and symbolic dimensions of lab materials, this unit makes scientific thinking visible and teaches students to see themselves as co-constructors of knowledge.
Space & Place: Fostering Student STEM Identity in the Lab
“The time is surely past when science teachers must plead the case for school laboratories. It is now widely recognized that science is a process and an activity as much as it is an organized body of knowledge, and that, therefore, it cannot be learned in any deep and meaningful way by reading and discussion alone.” —National Science Teachers Association, 1970
This quote underscores a central premise of this unit: that the laboratory is not simply a room in which science is taught, but a cultural and material space in which science is lived. Drawing on Catherine Bell’s framework on ritual and embodiment, we can understand scientific practices as secular embodied rituals that shape not only what we know but who we become.20 Even the act of walking into a room and putting on a lab coat is an act of ritual performance—a deliberate shift in identity that signals an individual’s participation in the scientific community.21 Geraci argues that laboratory work is not only technical but also a form of human ritual, akin to religious ceremonies in its role of knowledge making.22 Careful, repeated actions that define experimentation—the wearing of personal protective equipment, the handling of instruments, the observation, the detailed recording—are ritualized practices that shape how scientific knowledge is produced and integrated into our broader understanding of the world. Repeated gestures such as following protocols become embodied ways of knowing and belonging, cultivating an awareness of self as a participant in a shared scientific tradition.
Jan Koster’s work further expands this view by emphasizing that ritual’s ultimate goal is the formation and reinforcement of community identity, centered on the collective group itself.23 In the science classroom, this means that the rituals we enact—whether donning safety gear, working in sync during experiments, or adopting shared lab language—help students move beyond individual identity toward a sense of belonging within a collective scientific culture. Just as synchronous movements or common dress unify participants in both religious and secular rituals like sports or political gatherings, the science lab’s embodied rituals and material culture function as powerful tools of identity management and community building.24
The classroom laboratory is where students learn not only the procedures and content of scientific work but also begin to see themselves as participants in that work. Building on the work of Bourdieu, identity is closely linked to four forms of capital—cultural, social, linguistic, and material—that students bring with them and acquire through their experiences.25 Within science education, the concept of science identity frames how students come to see themselves, and are seen by others, as “science people.”26 In this sense, the classroom laboratory is an incubator for STEM identity; the lab is a place where behaviors, tools, and norms all shape how students come to understand what science is and who gets to do it. Shared laboratory rituals help students speak, move, and act as one, reinforcing their place in the shared enterprise of science and fostering a collaborative spirit that transcends individual differences.
While lab safety, scientific reasoning, and technical skills are essential foundations of science education, equally important is the cultivation of students’ identities as capable and thoughtful participants in scientific inquiry. As Avraamidou notes, science identity is not fixed; students’ STEM identities evolve over time through interactions, representations, and opportunities to participate meaningfully in science practices.27 The classroom laboratory is not a neutral backdrop for scientific work, but an active space that shapes behavior, reinforces norms, and communicates values. In this unit, the physical environment of the lab—the arrangement of space, the design of tools, and the expectations embedded in the materials—becomes a powerful influence on how students see themselves as scientists.28 By intentionally exploring this environment, students begin to recognize how space and place co-construct their understanding of what science is, how science is performed, who does science, and who science is for.
Just as laboratories have historically shaped scientific practice from 18th-century chemical labs to modern-day research spaces, the classroom lab serves as both a site of experimentation and a space where students negotiate their roles and identities as budding scientists. Through structured observation and object-centered analysis, students reflect on how their interactions with lab equipment influence their sense of belonging and scientific capabilities. Wearing goggles, for example, can feel exciting yet awkward at first, but, with time, this act signals membership in a shared scientific culture. The careful handling of fragile glassware teaches restraint, focus, and intentionality; these behaviors are all associated not just with safety, but with professionalism. Even seating arrangements, storage systems, and access to materials can shape students' agency and confidence as they navigate lab spaces.
Moreover, this unit helps students understand that scientific identity is not just about what you know, but how you move, speak, write, listen, and engage in a space designed for inquiry. By foregrounding material culture and environmental contexts, we encourage students to see themselves not as passive recipients of knowledge, but as active participants whose actions, safety, decisions, and sense of care all contribute meaningfully to the scientific process. This unit takes seriously the call for inclusion, not by simply placing students in the lab, but by helping them interpret, critique, and claim ownership of it.
As a high school science educator at Wilbur Cross High School in New Haven, I work with students who arrive each day with a variety of academic backgrounds, home circumstances, and life experiences. My classroom reflects a mixture of ethnicities, economic backgrounds, and social and emotional strengths and challenges. Because this unit emphasizes material culture, students engage with science both inside the classroom and beyond, including field trips to the Yale University Art Gallery and the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. While the curriculum is framed for science classrooms, teachers of history, social studies, art history, and English Language Arts can also adapt activities, emphasizing different aspects to fit their content.
Etienne Wenger reminds us that “learning transforms who we are and what we can do; it is an experience of identity.”29 That transformation happens in a space where students are not only performing experiments, but interpreting their tools, questioning their environments, and seeing themselves as active contributors to scientific knowledge. By examining the material culture of the lab—glassware, safety goggles, measurements, and lab benches—students begin to see science as something they are not only doing, but shaping.30 They develop agency, not only through inquiry, but through reflection on how their presence and practices matter in this space. Ultimately, by cultivating awareness of the lab as a space of belonging, this unit supports students in developing not just lab competence, but a reflective, empowered STEM identity grounded in care, curiosity, and community.
