Esther Dabagyan
SED 625
11/12/06
Dr. Rivas
Panel #4
Pro Inquiry Method
It is hard to imagine science without inquiry. From Aristotle to Watson and Crick;
all throughout history, science has involved the process of asking questions. Questions
about your surroundings as well as imaged possibilities are the basis of modern science.
This creative method of inquiry fuels science and science education. Our students
naturally ask questions in their minds from infancy and curiously absorb all they can
(How People Learn, Ch. 4). It only follows that as educators we step away from the oldfashioned didactic curriculum and base our practice on sound research and on our
knowledge of how the brain functions. This research points the way towards Inquiry
learning as the most effective method to stimulate our students and help them get one
step closer to becoming expert learners in their own right.
Most teachers still teach using the didactic method, which involves lectures and
note taking where the student is a passive member of the classroom. “International
comparisons reveal that the factors most often cited for poor performance in U.S. school
science are curriculum structure and textbooks, instructional approaches and the quality
of our teaching staff” (Schmidt, McKnight, & Raizen, 1996 as cited in Lynch et al. 2004).
When I began teaching, all my training during my credentialing period seem to leave me
as I dove into the textbook assigned to my class and tried to derive lessons from it. Most
new teachers make this mistake which results in poor content and poor lessons.
An inquiry approach to teaching science can be described as the following:
A curriculum unit: starts from ideas that are familiar or interesting to
children; explicitly conveys a sense of purpose; takes into account student
ideas, and conveys suggestions for teachers to find out what their students
think about the phenomena related to the benchmark; provides for firsthand experiences with phenomena; and has students represent their own
ideas about phenomena and practice using the acquired knowledge and
skills in varied contexts. (Kesidou & Roseman, 2002; Roseman, Kesidou,
& Stern, 1996 as cited in Lynth et al. 2004)
This account includes in it the full cycle of the scientific method from questioning to
sharing results and re-questioning. However, inquiry learning doesn’t constrain learners
to the strict and old-fashioned steps of the scientific method. Rather, it pulls from the
scientific method the essential aspects, and with teacher guidance, allows students to
freely explore new territory in their own learning and re-examine old ideas. As stated in
Lynch et al. (2004), the teaching practices that are most closely associated with high
achievement were hands-on learning activities and high-order thinking skills. Inquiry not
only allows students to get involved kinesthetically, but it allows them to examine the
metacognitive aspect of their learning.
There are also several misconceptions about Inquiry learning. (N.I.H., 2005) The
most common misconception is that if a teacher is doing something hands-on, then it is
inquiry. This is not true, an experiment does not always equate to a meaningful inquiry
experience for the students. Hands-on activities must be purposeful, carefully constructed
to address preconceptions, and have many opportunities for students to reflect and
communicate with their peers in a meaningful manner. Many students can successfully
perform an experiment yet not realize the significance of the scientific concept behind it.
This is an essential aspect of inquiry-based instruction.
Another common misconception is that students must generate their own
questions and pursue them. Many teachers choose not to enact complete open-ended
inquiry and use the method of guided inquiry. Different situations can call for different
approaches to inquiry learning, there is no one single method for inquiry. As the National
Institute of Health (2005) opens a curriculum guide about how to build inquiry based
units, it cautions teachers that in many cases it is the questions themselves, not their
source, that are most important. Thus, even if the teacher provides the students with a
question to pursue, an inquiry-based approach is still more than possible.
Students arrive in our classrooms not only with preconceptions about scientific
concepts, but about science itself. Many students view science as either true or false; a
simple collections of facts. The concepts that they have previously learned in science may
lead them to believe that scientific explanations are isolated events. By employing
inquiry-based methods in the classroom, we can impress upon our students the
importance of an ever-changing and fluid knowledge base in science. They can learn how
to evaluate one set of evidence versus another and make decisions regarding the validity
of explanations. The metacognitive aspect of inquiry can leave students open to
reinterpreting their own ideas.
The Inquiry method provides learning with understanding, a deep knowledge base
and a chance for students to form strategies about inquiry. In the book How People
Learn, the research on expertise conveys the importance of helping students develop an
assortment of inquiry abilities. These skills allow our students to take the scientific
concepts that they learn and experience and apply them to novel situations and other
inquiry tasks. In essence, inquiry-based methods allow our students to become better
learners.
References
Lynch, S., Kuipers, J., Pyke, C. Szesze, M. (2004). Examining the Effects of a Highly
Rated Science Curriculum Unit on Diverse Students: Results From a Planning Grant.
Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 42 (8), 912-946.
National Institutes of Health (2005). Doing Science: The Process of Scientific Inquiry.
Colorado Springs, CO: BSCS. Found here:
http://science.education.nih.gov/supplements/nih6/inquiry/default.htm
National Research Council (1999). How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and
School. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
National Research Council (2000). Inquiry and the National Science Education
Standards: A Guide for Teaching and Learning. Washington, D.C.: National Academy
Press.