Inquiry-based learning
It was not until the Enlightenment, or the Age of Reason, during the late 17th and 18th century that the subject of Science was considered a respectable academic body of knowledge.
[14] While Dewey was the first to draw attention to this issue, much of the reform within science education followed the lifelong work and efforts of Joseph Schwab.
This method is great to reinforce concepts taught and to introduce students into learning to follow procedures, collect and record data correctly and to confirm and deepen understandings.
Level 4: Open/true inquiry Students formulate their own research question(s), design and follow through with a developed procedure, and communicate their findings and results.
Open inquiry activities are only successful if students are motivated by intrinsic interests and if they are equipped with the skills to conduct their own research study.
With traditional non-open lessons there is a tendency for students to say that the experiment 'went wrong' when they collect results contrary to what they are told to expect.
Open learning has been developed by a number of science educators including the American John Dewey and the German Martin Wagenschein.
[34][35] The literature states that inquiry requires multiple cognitive processes and variables, such as causality and co-occurrence that enrich with age and experience.
[36][37] Kuhn, et al. (2000) used explicit training workshops to teach children in grades six to eight in the United States how to inquire through a quantitative study.
By completing an inquiry-based task at the end of the study, the participants demonstrated enhanced mental models by applying different inquiry strategies.
[38] A catalyst for reform within North American science education was the 1957 launch of Sputnik, the Soviet Union satellite.
This historical scientific breakthrough caused a great deal of concern around the science and technology education the American students were receiving.
In 1958 the U.S. congress developed and passed the National Defense Education Act in order to provide math and science teachers with adequate teaching materials.
Students use practices such as asking questions, planning and carrying out investigations, collaborating, collecting and analyzing data, and arguing from evidence to learn the core ideas and concepts in scientific content areas.
These practices are comparable to the 21st century skills that have been shown to be indicators of success in modern societies and workplaces regardless of whether that field is science based.
Students explore change and continuity of manners over time and the perspectives of different cultures and groups of people.
They analyze primary source documents such as books of etiquette from different time periods and form conclusions that answer the inquiry questions.
Through play and authentic experiences, children interact with their environment (people and/or objects) and question things; thus leading to inquiry learning.
A chart on page 15 clearly outlines the process of inquiry for young children, including initial engagement, exploration, investigation, and communication.
[56] As with inquiry-based learning in all divisions and subject areas, longitudinal research is needed to examine the full extent of this teaching/learning method.
The program, from the Dutch developmental psychologist Ewald Vervaet, is named Ontdekkend Leren Lezen (OLL; 'Discovery Learning to Read') and has three parts.
[58] Chu (2009) used a mixed method design to examine the outcome of an inquiry project completed by students in Hong Kong with the assistance of multiple educators.
[38] Hmelo-Silver, Duncan, & Chinn cite several studies supporting the success of the constructivist problem-based and inquiry learning methods.
This study also found that inquiry-based teaching methods greatly reduced the achievement gap for African-American students.
Inquiry science is not just about solving problems in six simple steps but much more broadly focused on the intellectual problem-solving skills developed throughout a scientific process.
Nonetheless the constructivist movement gained great momentum in the 1990s, because many educators began to write about this philosophy of learning.
Richard E. Mayer from the University of California, Santa Barbara, wrote in 2004 that there was sufficient research evidence to make any reasonable person skeptical about the benefits of discovery learning—practiced under the guise of cognitive constructivism or social constructivism—as a preferred instructional method.
[62] Inquiry-based teaching can be perceived as in conflict with standardized testing common in standards-based assessment systems which emphasize the measurement of student knowledge and skills.
[citation needed] In a 2006 article, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute's president, Chester E. Finn Jr., was quoted as saying "But like so many things in education, it gets carried to excess... [the approach is] fine to some degree.
Inquiry-science requires a lot of time, effort, and expertise, however, the benefits outweigh the cost when true authentic learning can take place[citation needed].
