I Was a Horse With Inquiry Blinders

What is inquiry in the science classroom, and should labs be part of science education?  Wow, could someone dare to suggest that labs have no place in the science classroom?  Well, it depends on the purpose of science education.  What do you think the purpose of a pre-college science class is?  Is it to learn about scientific facts; is it to make students aware of social crisis and issues that are scientifically influenced; or is it to teach students to be scientists?  The argument could be made that the students are there to learn science, not to be scientists.

In our consideration of inquiry in the science classroom we would do well to pause and consider the above questions, and determine if a science classroom can and should address all the above questions.  Whatever our conclusion, students need to be guided to knowledge through inquiry. 

In the National Science Teachers Association’s (NSTA) Position Statement on Scientific Inquiry, they state that the National Science Education Standards (NSES) define scientific inquiry as “the diverse ways in which scientists study the natural world and propose explanations based on the evidence derived from their work.  Scientific inquiry also refers to the activities through which students develop knowledge and understanding of scientific ideas, as well as an understanding of how scientists study the natural world.”  It is NSTA’s stance that understanding science content is significantly enhanced when ideas are anchored to inquiry experiences.

In the last sentence, could the word inquiry be replaced by the word lab?  I used to think so.  I changed traditional labs so that the students wrote the procedures to answer the lab question, or so that they figured out how to test a second or third sample after walking through an example lab.  Wasn’t this inquiry?  Weren’t they answering questions and figuring out things on their own?  Why was I getting such poor results?  Why was there a lack of evidence for deep understanding?  The answer: I was a horse wearing inquiry blinders, a puzzle missing a couple of pieces, a performance with dance after dance and no step weaving them together.

When talking with a language arts colleague, she stated that scientific inquiry was different than inquiry in her classes.  Reflection on her statement, my research and time spent with the South Mississippi Writing Project leads me to think that scientific inquiry is often so focused on the student as a scientist, that we fail to successfully use inquiry for the acquisition of scientific content.  As stated above, so often my students finished our inquiry project or activity without being able to show evidence of deep understanding.  They do the lab but cannot explain the results.  I am coming to understand that effective science inquiry involves the weaving of inquiry activities (labs) and inquiry learning (academic activities including guided student research), which are best executed through the mindset of constructivism.  Constructivism is a learning theory suggesting that through processes of accommodation and assimilation, individuals construct new knowledge from their experiences.  Along with constructivism (the teacher’s careful construction of opportunities for students to create specific knowledge), opportunities for metacognition are important in achieving deep understanding.  Metacognition is the awareness and regulation of one’s own learning process.  I believe metacognition is where writing will play a key role in enhancing deeper understanding in my science classroom.  As I have observed in language arts classrooms, inquiry encompasses teacher guidance that leads the student to construct meaning and knowledge.  My new working definition of inquiry reads like this: the teacher’s role in scientific inquiry is to lead students down a specific path that will allow for the construction of knowledge as they resolve their questions (which were planted by me) through research, collaboration, thought, writing and experimentation.  See the next blog for ideas about planting questions to sway the dance of your classroom.

An inquiry based approach is most effective when it is carefully designed and structured by teachers.  It was with the understanding that inquiry is an approach, otherwise thought of as a way of thinking, an environment or culture of the classroom, that I found the missing piece of my inquiry puzzle, the blinders I’d been wearing, the missing step in my dance!  I was offering inquiry activities to my students, but not really an inquiry environment with a constructivist mindset and time for metacognition.  Think about it, science teachers are charged with teaching students to be scientist AND with teaching scientific facts.  This lofty request cannot be realized through haphazard teaching consisting of poorly linked lectures, practice sets, strategies and labs, but is possible through the carefully choreographed science classroom where inquiry in its broadest sense leads the way.

For more Information I recommend the following:

Book:
Teaching High School Science Through Inquiry by Douglas Llewellyn, NSTA Press, 2005

Web Article: 
National Science Teachers Association’s (NSTA) Position Statement on Scientific Inquiry, http://www.nsta.org/docs/PositionStatement_ScientificInquiry.pdf     

Websites:
http://www.teachinquiry.com/index/Introduction.html
www.galileo.org