Erin E. Peters
Last Updated on May
26, 2005
The importance of inquiry science is described in the National Science Education Standards (NSES) as a central strategy for teaching science (NRC, 1996). The NSES encourage teachers to “guide, focus, challenge, and encourage student learning” at all stages of inquiry. In the Benchmarks for Science Literacy, students should know by the end of the 5th grade that inquiry science can lead to different results due to differing methodologies. National documents address inquiry and encourage teachers to develop inquiry-based lessons, but do not direct teachers to a cognitive understanding of inquiry. Inquiry is an amorphous idea which is difficult for practitioners, whose time is mostly devoted to more immediate dilemmas, to grasp. This study looked at how elementary science teachers think about inquiry science and enact inquiry science in their classrooms.
The six teachers selected for the study were enrolled in an instructional technology course at a local public university. The goal of the course was for the group to design an instructional tool that combined inquiry science with reading comprehension in the field of earth science. The teachers signed up for the class with the understanding that they would also be research participants. Before the first meeting of the class, teachers took the Survey of Enacted Curriculum and constructed a concept map illustrating their understanding of inquiry in science. The teachers were interviewed regarding their beliefs and practices of science inquiry at the beginning of the class. During the class the teachers experienced a three-prong instruction that elicited teacher prior knowledge, explored the authentic science inquiry process of a geomorphologist, and addressed instructional practices through readings and videos. After the university class, the teachers were again asked to develop concept maps detailing their understanding of science inquiry and interviewed to elicit their practices and beliefs in science inquiry.
The data sources were coded in several different ways. First the interview transcriptions were coded for common phrases. The codes were cataloged in a matrix along with common codes from the concept maps drawn by the participants. The interviews were mapped into webbings so that the comparison between concept maps and interviews was consistent. All maps and webbings were analyzed for structure as well as context. [More detail]
The findings from the study showed that when teachers were asked about their conceptual frameworks of inquiry, they spoke only about their actions in the classroom. The teachers commented on their personal understanding of inquiry by explaining their classroom processes. The teachers were competent in articulating how they carried out inquiry activities, but unable to verbalize their thoughts regarding the concepts of inquiry. They had difficulty in explaining an understanding of inquiry deeper than performance activities.
Analysis of the common perceptions of the teachers also yielded their understanding of the questioning nature of inquiry. Before the intervention, teachers thought inquiry was akin to the scientific method and after the intervention, teachers through inquiry was more iterative. Teachers demonstrated their knowledge of inquiry to be cycles of questioning by teachers and by students, but lacked any understanding of use of the habits of mind of science to answer the questions.
The question that this study evokes is “How would teachers develop a deeper understanding of the habits of mind of science?” Professional development in understanding the nature of science could achieve teacher understanding of inquiry at a deeper level than a generic questioning cycle. Explicitly teaching concepts of the nature of science would help elementary teachers develop a foundation of the habits of mind of science in order to make content connections.