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Inquiry-Based Learning:This section outlines the definition of inquiry and how it can be incorporated into the curriculum and implemented into science standards.
What is Inquiry?
- Humans are innately curious
- Standards promote curriculum, instruction and assessment that help teachers build on children’s natural inquisitiveness
- Inquiry can be structured or free form
- Uses scientific reasoning and critical thinking to develop understanding of science
National Science Standards and Inquiry
- Inquiry –prominent focus in the National Science Education Standards
- Inquiry is both a learning goal and a teaching method
- Skilled teacher is the key to effective inquiry-based instruction
The Different Meanings of Inquiry
- Abilities students should develop to design and conduct scientific investigations
- Understanding students should gain about the nature of scientific inquiry
- Teaching and learning strategies that enable scientific concepts to be mastered through investigation
Inquiry in Teaching
- Teach inquiry abilities
- Understanding inquiry
- Teaching science subject matter through inquiry
- Encourage questions, such as “How do we know this? And “What difference does it make?”---reflective questions requiring integration of information
Inquiry and the National Science Standards Topics Covered
- Multiple roles of inquiry
- including Comparison of the methods and processes of research scientists with inquiry-based science lessons
- Vignettes where inquiry is being incorporated
- Assessment in inquiry-based classrooms
- Preparing teachers to employ inquiry-based teaching
- Research results from studies of inquiry-based learning
- Guides for selecting materials
Common components Shared by Instructional Methods
- Phase 1: Students engage with a scientific question, event or phenomenon
- Phase 2: Students explore ideas through hands-on experience, formulate and test hypotheses, solve problem, and create explanations for what they observe.
- Phase 3: Students analyze and interpret data, synthesize their ideas, build models, and clarify concepts and explanations with teachers and other sources of scientific knowledge
- Phase 4: Students extend their new understanding and abilities and apply what they have learned to new situations.
- Phase 5: Students extend their new understanding and assess what they have learned and how they have learned it.
Common Myths
- All subject matter should be taught through inquiry
- Inquiry occurs only when students generate and pursue their own questions
- Inquiry teaching occurs easily through the use of hands-on or kit- based instructional materials
- Student engagement in hands-on activities guarantees that inquiry teaching and learning are occurring
- Inquiry can be taught without attention to subject matter
Research Findings
- Understanding science is more than knowing facts
- Students build new knowledge and understanding on what they already know and believe
- Students formulate new knowledge by modifying and refining their current concepts and by adding new concepts to what they already know.
- Learning is mediated by the social environment in which learners interact with others
- Effective learning requires that students take control of their own learning
- The ability to apply knowledge to novel situations, that is, transfer of learning is affected by the degree to which students learn with understanding.
Three Suggested Resources
- Inquire Within: Implementing Inquiry-based Science Standard, Douglas Llewellyn
- Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards, National Research Council
- Developing Inquiry-Based Science Materials, Herbert D. Thier
Developing Inquiry-Based Science Materials
Materials Should:
- Address the teacher’s role in guided inquiry
- Discuss the role of inquiry and the new definition of education
- Offer principles for designing materials for guided inquiry
- Provide practical advice for finding funding; working with a project team and working with partners
- Offer ideas for assessment and evaluation
- Suggest modes of testing, revising, implementing and disseminating the materials
- Also should contain a helpful checklist for the project
Inquire Within: Implementing Inquiry-Based Science Standards
- Explores the meaning of inquiry through a constructivist approach
- Address what is constructivism and how children learn science through a constructivist approach
- Compares how children learn science with how scientists do science
- Importance of the Scientific Method
- Integrating Inquiry-Based Activities
- Designing Inquiry-Based Classrooms
- Skills and Knowledge of Inquiry-Based Teachers
- Using Questioning Skills in Inquiry
For questions and further information contact:
Tina Bishop, EDD or Melissa Ryan
The College of Exploration
230 Markwood Drive, Potomac Falls, VA 20165
melissa@coexploration.net tina@coexploration.net
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