Levels of Inquiry

1
Levels of Inquiry

• Helping teachers help
• students find their
• way through the maze of
• inquiry practices using
• differentiated instruction.

2
Authentic Problem Solving

• Problem-based learning
• Failure analysis
• Scientific experimentation
• Technological design
• Etc.

3
Each practice assumes

• That students know something about inquiry.
• More sophisticated problem solving requires more
  sophisticated inquiry skills.
• Lower ability levels of inquiry must be learned
  and practiced prior to employing higher levels.
• Teachers must use instructional strategies
  appropriate to meeting the readiness levels of
  all students (differentiated instruction).

4
Sophisticated Inquiry Skills

• Solving complex, real-world problems.
• Establishing empirical laws
• Synthesizing theoretical explanations
• Analyzing and evaluating scientific arguments
• Constructing logical proofs
• Generating principles through induction
• Generating predictions through deduction

5
Teaching Inquiry Practices

• While inquiry is instinctive among children,
  their natural propensity is rather limited.
• Authentic inquiry practices addressing real-world
  problems are many and complex.
• How do we teach students to conduct inquiry at
  higher levels?
• Assist with students metacognitive understanding
  of the inquiry process
• Model and fade though a set of progressively more
  sophisticated inquiry practices

6
Metacognitive Understanding

• Provide students with mental models.
• Mental models
• are cognitive frameworks (e.g., road maps)
• are alternative representations of complex
  patterns (e.g., rules of language)
• provide for an understanding of the hierarchy and
  approaches of inquiry processes.
• Hierarchy of levels can be used to deploy inquiry
  effectively.

7
Modeling Inquiry Practices

• Start simple and move to the more complex.
• There are many levels of inquiry
• Discovery learning
• Interactive demonstrations
• Inquiry lessons
• Inquiry labs
• Guided
• Bounded
• Free
• Hypothesis development (pure and applied)

8
Discovery Learning

• The most basic form of inquiry-based learning.
• It is based on the Aha! approach.
• A very guided approach to observation, pattern
  recognition, or conclusion.
• Used with lower elementary school students.

9
Interactive Demonstrations

• Teacher models investigatory processes
• Teacher uses a think-aloud protocol to conduct
  demonstration (e.g., floating and sinking,
  defining and measuring buoyancy finding its
  relationship with density, pinhole images, etc.).
• Teacher probes for understanding, prediction, and
  explanation.

10
Inquiry Lessons

• Teacher leads students through a simple
  experiment (e.g., Which variables affect
  buoyancy? How can we test this?)
• Define problem
• Define system
• Identify and control variables
• Teacher regularly speaks about nature of
  scientific inquiry.

11
Inquiry Laboratories

• As opposed to cookbook labs (see handout for five
  major distinctions)
• Levels of inquiry labs
• Guided - with lots of questions
• Bounded - with teacher provided question only
• Free - student guided from problem identification
  through experimental process.

12
Distinguishing Lab Types
13
Hypothesis development

• Detailed explanation based upon substantial
  information
• Source of buoyancy
• Inverse-square law of light
• How conservation accounts for kinematic laws
• Why laws for parallel and series resistance hold
• How Newtons second law accounts for Bernoullis
  law of fluid flow

14
Levels differ by amount of

• Teacher/material guidance.
• Decreases with higher levels of inquiry
• Student independence.
• Increases with higher levels of inquiry
• Skills deployed.
• Intellectual processes higher with level
• Technology more sophisticated with level

15
Sophistication / Locus of Control
16
Inquiry Intellectual Processes
17
Resources

• Colburn, A. (2000). Science Scope, "An Inquiry
  Primer," March 2000
• Herron, M.D. (1971). The nature of scientific
  enquiry. School Review, 79(2), 171- 212. (levels
  of inquiry)
• Wenning, C. (2005). Levels of inquiry
  Hierarchies of pedagogical practices and inquiry
  processes. Journal of Physics Teacher Education
  Online, 2(3), pp. 3-11.