Steve 3/23: Inquiring into Inquiry

a)      Key Points for Science Teaching: The ADI article stresses the importance of argument and reflection for science understanding.  When students debate each other and review each other’s work, it uncovers misconceptions the students have about different science topics.  One thing to be careful about is that student-led arguments and discussions can lead to incorrect ideas about science so it is important that the teacher help guide class ideas when they get too far off the mark.  The part of the BGuILE article I liked best was the part about the false dichotomy between teaching just facts and teaching just process.  I like the idea of a balance of both.  Students should understand how real science is done by inquiry style projects, but it would take a long time to teach students all the content knowledge they need to keep their options open if we only used the inquiry method.  A balance of both allows students to practice the mangle of science but also learn a lot from the previous work of others’ mangle.  Without a balance of the two, students won’t be able to properly evaluate if they would enjoy a future in science or not. 

b)     Practical application: The ADI article outlines a very practical type of lesson plan that can be used in class.  The authors use the specific example of a genetic testing project to illustrate the way the lesson would work.  I can see this framework being very helpful but I would guess that some of it will seem tedious to students.  The process is so long that I fear some students might get bored with such an in-depth exploration of the same topic.  Even with a very interesting and complex topic, not all students will be interested for that long.  Many of the ideas are cool though like the double blind peer review.  The BGuILE article has lots of practical applications as well.  It discuss how reflection needs to be saved and discussed to be valuable, students can’t just reflect and never look at it again.  It also discusses how it is best to use technology that is applicable across a wide spectrum of classes.  For example, using Excel for science experiments would be good because Excel can be used in math class, in accounting, and possibly other courses as well. 

c)      Interconnections with themes:  These articles fit with the theme of introducing inquiry into science classrooms, and provide practical examples of how that can look. They also fit with the theme of constantly improving our models.  Both articles include advice to engage the students in a lot of reflection and critical analysis of their work.  This is an important part of modeling.

d)     Leveraging critique:  These articles seem to agree with the NGSS standards we read about.  Narcessian would also be a fan of these ideas as she thinks modeling is an important skill for science and articles are suggesting a lot of practices that share many elements with modeling.

e)      Connecting with class:  The articles connect with my own modeling experience in a couple of ways.  First, I find that setting aside time for reflection on what I am doing without the code in front of me is very productive, just like both articles encourage constant reflection.  Second, both articles and particularly the ADI article promote peer review, and I have found that asking classmates questions is very valuable and usually leads to good progress in my thinking. 

f)       Questions:  How do teachers properly guide thinking away from incorrect student ideas in such a free-form style of class?  What topics work better as inquiry and what topics work better as more content-delivery style?  Is there some pattern in the difference or some questions to ask to determine if a topic would be good for inquiry-learning or not?

g)      Modeling Ideas: Falling dominoes, bowling balls with different amounts of spin, bowling pins getting hit at different angles.