3/23 Dan - Inquiry and Investigation

One of the connections between the BGuILE and ADI practices that I found interesting was that both advocated deeper exploration into topics at the expense of covering a wider range of topics.  I thought that this was interesting because many current curricula treat subjects more as survey courses, especially at the AP level.  Deeper exploration into fewer topics allows teachers and students to work on the scientific practices that both articles are arguing are more important than the content.  I agree that the practices need to be a much bigger emphasis in science classrooms.  Equations and definitions can be learned from almost anywhere, but learning how to ask appropriate questions, investigate, collect and interpret data, and defend those interpretations with evidence are a set of practices unique to the scientific community and need to be at the core of any science course.  My concern with ADI is that it is an extremely time consuming process that may be difficult to replicate several times with the same group of students.  Perhaps it is a process hat is not used with every topic within a course, but is just used a handful of time throughout a school year.  In the BGuILE classroom, I like the idea of having software that can help students construct arguments by directly connecting claims and evidence.  I know this is a relatively old article, and I would by curious to see what similar software would look like today, and across what subjects it would be useful.  Both of these articles seem to fit with the themes of other articles we have read of leading an inquiry based classroom.  Both emphasize the importance of evidence in support of claims.

Questions: How important is it that these practices are fully employed for every topic?  For the sake of classroom efficiency, could these practices be used only on selected topics?