Miha Lee’s SLO Reflection #3
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Action Research Paper for Research Skills
(The Effect of Inquiry Laboratory on Conceptual Understanding)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF ASSIGNMENT
In the action research, The Effect of Inquiry Laboratory on Conceptual
Understanding, I investigated the effect of inquiry laboratory for high school students’
conceptual change. Every science teacher admits the importance of laboratory work in
teaching science, but the purposes of the work seem to be multitude or even vague. As a high
school teacher I wanted to employ the inquiry method to promote the conceptual
understanding of what students learn in the name of chemistry by giving the students an
opportunity to build knowledge from their own experiences.
I found that the inquiry laboratory was an effective way of learning discrete factual
knowledge which was the elements of a conceptual structure, but it was not efficient to help
students build the structure without discussion with the teacher after the inquiry activity.
Discovery learning is for learning by doing. However, there are limitations in learning by
doing. Learners need guides and scaffolds from the teacher, an expert in the discipline or the
subject, to see not only the trees but also the whole forest. I regard my design not as a failure
but an unfinished project because I was not the teacher who took the actions. Next time, I can
do better as real teacher in my classroom because I learned a lot from this project.
CONNECTIONS TO THE SLO OF RESEARCH SKILLS
This project taught me how to conduct a research project for education. I have
learned how to decide what to investigate or achieve, what to do to achieve the goal, how to
collect data for evidences, how to code my data, how to triangulate my assertions, how to
present my findings in a compact way, how to develop the discussion, and how to write up
the final report. Now I am confident of my ability to carry out more projects with variety of
topics in education.
REFLECTION
Although I had conducted a scientific research in a chemistry lab for my first
master’s degree and two “naïve” action research projects while teaching chemistry in high
school, this project gave me a lot of lessons for my research skills.
Miha Lee’s SLO Reflection #3
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First, this is the first theory based project that I conducted for education. In my last
two action research projects, there were no explicit literature reviews. However, I collected
and read a huge amount of information from peer reviewed academic journals and books. In
fact, the second lesson is that I learned how to collect information that I need. Sixteen years
ago when I worked for my first dissertation, my advisor provided me with research papers
and I went to a library to get more information, looking for abstracts to find good research
papers. It was time consuming and troublesome. However, the online library and web
archives of research journals saved my time and efforts to an extent I could imagine. Third, I
learned the importance of getting informed consent.
However, the most important thing I learned is that making my report succinct is the
most important skill that I need to develop. I had so many things in my mind when I
presented my findings that I made the audience confused. If I don’t allow them to understand
my points, I can’t share the things I found with them. At first, it was like cutting my flesh to
reduce the findings and discussion. Finally, however, I realized that my ideas were not well
organized enough to convey my points to the audience.
In addition, I had trouble conducting the project because I was not the teacher in the
classroom. It restricted my choice for the research topic and method. I am interested in
writing in science and in using computer and internet for science education. In my future
research, I will expand my topics and method to those areas. For example, after the inquiry
laboratory I will have discussion with my students and then asked them to write up lab papers
in an essay form. We will share these papers with other class mates on the web to promote
collaborative learning by getting feedbacks form peers and me. I will investigate the effect of
discussion and feedback on the web.
All in all, these projects helped me building research skills and deepen my
commitment to using inquiry for teaching for conceptual understanding.