The Role of Classroom Management in Developing Socially Constructed
Knowledge in Inquiry Science
Erin E. Peters
Abstract
This case study was completed with a seventh grade life science teacher who was well respected for conducting inquiry successfully in her classroom. Data collection consisted of a pre-observation teacher interview, observations of a 4-week unit, a post-observation teacher interview, and a student focus group. The teacher had prior experiences as a student that influenced her decisions to allow students to socially construct knowledge. Students in Jen’s class needed explicit instruction in how to operate in an inquiry classroom structure, and expressed that they learned better by developing ideas in a group. Giving teachers tangible processes for conducting social construction of knowledge in science explorations is a step in moving beyond traditional teacher as sole authority teaching models.
Introduction
Research
Problem
Science educators agree that inquiry science is a quality method for teaching students of all ages science content as well as providing an opportunity for small groups or whole classes to socially construct scientific knowledge (AAAS, 1993; NRC, 1996). One barrier teachers experience in establishing an inquiry setting in a classroom is the need to reeducate students to learn so that the teacher is not the sole distributor of knowledge. In an inquiry setting, students need to have the skills to work collectively in negotiating ideas rather than reiterating what teachers or other authorities have told them. Since the process of inquiry is not didactic, teachers need to learn how to structure class so that they are no longer the sole authority figure with regard to knowledge and to give students the skills and opportunity to work together to construct knowledge. This case study examined the structures that an exemplary seventh grade life science teacher created to manage her class in an inquiry investigation and the students’ reactions to this unique learning setting. If classroom management structures could be identified and taught to other teachers, then perhaps similar outcomes could be produced and provide an environment that encouraged the construction of knowledge through inquiry.
Theoretical Framework
Teacher classroom practices represent an epistemological posture about science from which students, in part, draw from to develop their notion of value on their own knowledge and the impact social interactions have on the construction of knowledge (Larochelle & Desautels, 1991). Traditional didactic teaching features telling and showing scientific phenomena as the knowledge that counts, rather than knowledge that is developed through social interaction. By continuing to teach in a didactic approach, teachers reflect a type of socialization that occurs in formal educational settings (Zeichner & Gore, 1990). Meaningful learning requires connection to student prior knowledge, and learning tasks that have substance. On the contrary, rote learning from didactic delivery of information is not related to student experiences with objects or events. Hodson (1988) calls for a break in the vicious circle permitting reproduction of traditional school epistemology concerning science. When students view science as static, they wait until facts become available to them instead of discovering and integrating the science ideas themselves (Chin & Brown, 2000). In science, this didactic transmission of knowledge perpetuates the idea that scientific knowledge is a collection of facts in their final form. Didactic teaching leaves students confused when they are taught that science is a collection of facts in their final form, yet scientists understand this collection of facts to be tentative. This confusion among students can be avoided if teachers understood how inquiry can be used to teach knowledge about science instead of merely scientific knowledge. Science educators face the challenge how to design science instruction that reinforces that scientific knowledge will inevitably change (Duschl, 1990). If the design of inquiry instruction is to be meaningful, knowledge of the nature of science should be part of a teacher’s repertoire.
Translating Knowledge of the Nature of
Science into Classroom Practice.
Even with
modest gains in teacher understanding of the content of the nature of science,
teachers for the most part fail in translating this knowledge into classroom
practice. A study of a group of preservice teachers with adequate knowledge of
the nature of science showed that there was not much instruction involving the
nature of science due to a preoccupation with classroom management and the
mandated curriculum (Abd-El-Khalick, Bell & Lederman, 1998). In a study
involving preservice teachers in
Teacher Competence in Inquiry.
The previously mentioned research studies indicate factors that contribute to a teacher’s ability to lead inquiry instruction such as years of experience in science teaching, an active role in translating nature of science knowledge into classroom practice, and explicit instruction of the concepts of the nature of science. Beginning science teachers do not have the experience to develop a set of knowledge and beliefs, which is usually consistent with how teachers act in practice (van Driel, Beijaard & Verloop, 2001). Bartholomew and Osborne (2004) examined in-service teachers for factors involved in competence in teaching authentic science. They found five critical domains necessary for competence (a) teachers knowledge and understanding of the nature of science, (b) teachers conceptions of their own role in the classroom, (c) teachers’ use of discourse, (d) teachers’ conceptions of learning goals, and (e) the nature of classroom activities. Teachers continue to develop their views of the nature of science through their professional experiences (Nott & Wellington, 1998), so continuous, quality professional development may be key in emergent competence in teacher knowledge of the nature of science and inquiry. A professional development activity involving the communication of recent developments in the field of biotechnology by scientists to teachers showed that scientists demonstrated a strong commitment to empiricism and experimental design, but not necessarily the nature of science (Glason & Bentley, 2000). Developing a competence in teaching inquiry is indeed a complicated endeavor when the scientific community itself has difficulty in expressing the nature of science comprehensively.
Influences of Epistemology of Science on Instruction.
The way a teacher understands science as a way of knowing greatly influences how the teacher implements instruction and how the students perceive the discipline of science (DeSautels & Larochelle, 2005). Teachers often set up discourse in science as a pattern of question asking, students answer questions and teacher evaluates the student answer (Lemke, 1990). When teachers establish such attitudes toward science, they evoke the idea that science is a collection of final facts and that learning science is the accumulation of these facts. Meyer (2004) found novice teachers discussed knowledge as if it was a static object, and learning was an accumulation of more bits of information while expert teachers took a more complex view of scientific knowledge.
Socially Constructed Knowledge.
Methods of teaching that allow students to construct knowledge socially are helpful in developing deeper meaning because thought processes of students are exposed and are easier to understand (Gijlers & de Jong, 2005; Hogan 1999). Social construction of knowledge also aids students in recognizing the processes involved in developing scientific arguments such as cultural experience in scientific communities (Hogan & Maglienti, 2001). Several studies revolve around an exemplary teacher who uses status words to help students evaluate the scientific merit of their knowledge (Beeth, 1998; Beeth & Hewson, 1999). Some of the techniques of the exemplary teacher are not considered transferable, but the method she uses to develop student ideas with status words is considered transferable to other teachers. Status words used in these processes are intelligibility, plausibility, and fruitfulness. Intelligibility is the primary criteria students use to determine if an idea makes sense to them. If students find the idea to be intelligible, then they are asked to see if the idea is plausible. To be plausible means that the idea correlates to students’ own experiences or experiences they have heard about. The last criteria, the most difficult to determine, is fruitfulness. If the idea can be transferred to different applications, then the idea is fruitful. Some of the research suggests that these strategies are useful for elementary students, but attempts to use them with middle school students were not as successful (Beeth & Hewson, 1999). More sophisticated structures may be needed to elicit social construction of knowledge for middle school students.
Argumentation in the Construction of
Scientific Understanding.
Another
camp of researchers sees the chief tool for social construction of knowledge as
argumentation, as it is central to the presentation of scientific information.
Research from this area has shown that written reports of scientific knowledge
do not necessarily indicate the totality of student knowledge (Chin & Brown,
2000). Teacher methods that allow students to use written, visual and oral
presentations of information are the methods that are most successful in
showing the depth of student knowledge. However, teachers do not have the
pedagogical knowledge to conduct whole class evaluation of arguments that allow
students to have a voice in the class (Driver,
Management Structures in Science Classes.
The management structures teachers plan in order to direct classroom activities is an essential part of setting the stage for student learning. The teachers’ role in an inquiry classroom is to develop investigations that encourage social construction of knowledge, to monitor student actions, and to react to classroom events (Beeth & Hewson, 1999). In their study of exemplary science teaching practices, Beeth and Hewson found that teachers can foster scientific construction of knowledge by facilitating progress in directions that are productive for students and that are consistent with plans for teaching.
Research Questions
This study is intended to explore the mechanisms in a seventh-grade science classroom that has an exemplary management structure for the purpose of inquiry science by asking the following research questions: (a) What factors lead to a teacher’s decision to conduct inquiry? (b) What classroom management structures must teachers create in the planning stages of an inquiry unit? (c) How will students react to the classroom management structures during an inquiry unit?
Researcher Perspective
As I attend professional conferences and read practitioner-oriented books, I have noticed in the past ten years that the ability to teach using an inquiry style is a sought after skill. Learning strands at national science teacher conferences are often structured to facilitate ways to incorporate inquiry into the classroom. Since inquiry in the classroom uses science process skills such as observing, collecting data and making conclusions, it occurred to me that teachers who set up their classroom so that students are free to explore are more successful in teaching inquiry science. I think that teachers need to retool their students’ ideas about how classrooms operate when teaching inquiry. Students often come to class expecting to have the teacher provide all of the information and they take a more passive role in learning it. I try my best as a classroom teacher to teach with an inquiry style, and I find that my students have a great deal of cognitive dissonance when they enter my classroom. They are used to the teacher asking a question, one student answers the question, and the teacher give a response to the correctness of the question (Lemke, 1990). In my 8th grade science classroom, I give students more responsibility in the role of learning. I wanted to find out if other teachers who successfully teach inquiry science have similar styles.
When I have been to professional development workshops I have observed the masses of teachers clamoring for any information about inquiry. Inquiry is such an amorphous idea, but it is an important one. My discussions with other teachers from around the country reveal that teachers understand that inquiry is important because it is an authentic way to teach science, but teachers are having a difficult time enacting inquiry learning with their students. Some of the teachers have identified the lack of time and the lack of resources as barriers to teaching inquiry, but I suspect there is more behind conducting inquiry in the science classroom than time and resources.
I believe that teachers who teach in an open, inquiry method have a deeper understanding of the nature of science, and their students have a better understanding of how science is organized as a discipline. Teachers who are able to see the big ideas in science probably know something about how scientists think, and insist that their students think in the same way through inquiry activities. Teachers who are more focused on smaller, factual knowledge probably do not offer opportunities for inquiry in the classroom. Teachers who are focused on science as a collection of facts probably do not have time to allow students to openly explore ideas through open ended experiments. I chose to observe a teacher who is known for her inquiry style because I think she has already developed somewhat of an understanding of how her classroom set up helps her to teach inquiry. From my experience, I know that I was more concerned with factual knowledge during the first few years of my teaching career, and that students were less likely to take away universal scientific understandings.
Method
Setting
This study
took place in a middle school serving students from grades six to eight in a
metropolitan area located in the mid-Atlantic region of the
Design
The case study was completed with a seventh grade life science teacher who was well respected among her peers and supervisors for conducting open and guided inquiry consistently and successfully in her classroom. The participant was chosen because she had 5 years of experience in teaching and had adequate knowledge of the biological sciences. During the time period of the study, the teacher conducted a 4-week unit on genetics. The researcher is a teacher at the same school as the participant, so she was familiar with the environment and procedures of the school. An interview with the teacher which probed beliefs about science teaching in general, instructional planning, and intended outcomes of the unit was conducted before the unit of instruction. Field notes were taken at three points during the unit of instruction (20 classes at 47 minutes each) and teacher resource materials as well as student materials were analyzed. An interview with the teacher followed the unit of instruction, which probed student behaviors, instructional outcomes and previous experiences.
A focus group randomly chosen by the teacher consisted of 6 out of the 26 students observed was conducted to identify student ideas about the structures in the class and their influence on learning science. Field notes, focus group and interview transcripts were coded using an iterative process. Initially, the field notes and interview transcripts were read in totality to get a sense of the entirety of the data. Then codes were established that were verbatim from the notes and transcripts (Emerson, Fretz & Shaw, 1995). Several iterations of categorizing the verbatim codes revealed organizing codes such as minimizing class rules, the endurance of big ideas, science as experiential, and the value of teamwork. The validity of the data was checked by having other researchers review the categorization of the codes, considering other possibilities for conclusions, utilizing data that reoccurred throughout the data sources, and having frequent member checks. (Maxwell, 1996).
Before the study began, the researcher “hung out” in the participating teacher’s room to get a general feel for the unit before interviews and observations were attempted. In order to clarify intentions, it was explained to Jen (a pseudonym for the participating teacher) how qualitative studies are different than randomized experiments, and the role of interviewing as an important data source was discussed. The researcher reviewed how the interviews would take place and the possibility that Jen would probably feel that the interview was a very one-sided conversation. It was also described to Jen that this was not a comparative study and that the goal of this study was to tell a story about how she thought about science. The researcher and Jen discussed Jen’s feelings regarding being exposed during the study, and Jen decided that the opportunity for learning outweighed any insecurity she had about revealing her thoughts. She told the researcher that she was used to having people observe her class and felt that education should be an open experience. Jen felt that isolating yourself in teaching was counterproductive, and teachers who isolate themselves fail to learn very much from their limited experiences.
When Jen was asked to be part of the study, she was informed before the study began that the purpose of the study was to see some exemplary inquiry lessons. The observations provided a good framework for the structure of Jen’s classroom and frequent participant validity (Maxwell, 1996) was implemented with Jen and with her students. Jen was asked to select up to six students to participate in a focus group and she randomly selected two female students and four male students who ranged from low ability to high ability during the unit.
Participants
In considering
possible participants, sixth and seventh grade teachers at
The student focus group was chosen randomly from Jen’s class list. Six students, two girls and four boys were randomly chosen from the class periods observed. The cognitive performance of the students varied and the focus group was conducted after the unit of study was completed. The questions focused on comparisons with the rules and structure of science classes from other teachers, comparisons of rules and structures in core classes other than science, and details of structures in their current science class related to their learning outcomes.
Data Collection
Methods
Data were collected using semi-structured personal interviews with the teacher before and after classroom observations, semi-structured focus group discussion after the genetics unit with six students, observations of classroom activities from the beginning, middle and end of the genetics unit, and artifacts from the genetics unit that included student products, teacher plans and handouts. Questioning protocol can be found in Figure 1. The first teacher interview was held before the genetics unit was taught. The classroom observations and artifact collection took place during the next four weeks. The follow-up teacher interview and the student focus group were held after the culminating activity for the genetics unit was completed.
Data Collection
Procedures
The first data source came from the initial teacher interview. The question asked were very broad and indirect regarding the nature of science and how Jen viewed science as a discipline. The questions asked during this interview session did not yield “rich” results. This may have happened because the questions were too esoteric and vague for a teacher who focuses on practical issues. Teachers live in the present and have a variety of concrete issues to deal with at a moments notice. They rarely get the opportunity to reflect on their own actions because of time constraints, let alone ponder about the philosophy of science. Data I obtained were thin compared to data I obtained in later observations and interviews.
Three classroom observations were the next data sources in the study. The observations occurred at the beginning of a genetics unit, during a student research day, and during the culminating activity, a supreme-court style trial regarding issues in genetics. Each time an observation was made, the teacher was welcoming and the students paid little attention to the researcher. Students were often so busy in their activity, that they did not have the opportunity to notice me. Observations were made from vantage points in the room that were out of the main working areas of the room. The researcher was still able to move around the room to obtain multiple perspectives. Research intentions were described to Jen before the project began, so the transaction went smoothly. Field notes were composed first from a board perspective to describe the setting of the class and then from a narrow perspective, focusing on personal interactions. The first observation was during a Socratic seminar, so the whole class was involved in the same activity. Half of the class was having a discussion, while the other half reflected on that discussion. It was structured in two parts: an inner circle and an outer circle. In order to collect the most valuable and comprehensive observations, the student interactions were observed and then the observations shifted to the teacher role, then back to the student interactions and so on.
The second class observed was a student research day. Students were gathering information independently and the teacher interacted with students. Since the students were working at tables of four, observations were made initially from the class as a whole, and then the researcher visited the groups as necessary. Intermittent observations were taken of Jen interacting with individual students. The students were busy preparing for their roles in the upcoming trial. The feel of this class was different because the students were working on an individual paper rather than discussing issues as a whole class. Students had different learning styles and were at different levels of understanding. Observing this type of lesson gave me the opportunity to witness one-on-one student and teacher interactions.
The third class was a special event, the mock supreme-court trial that addressed issues in genetics. It was held in the library of the school and the entire team of students attended for three consecutive class periods, instead of the usual structure which was approximately 25 students meeting for one class period as in the first and second observation. This observation revealed more of the assessment structures that were in place to elicit inquiry and gave me an indication of the final products that students produced.
The student focus group was the next data source in the study. Six students were chosen randomly for the focus group. Questions were structured so that information gathered during the observations and during the teacher interview could be validated. Although questions were focused on concrete practices in the class, the students began to describe their understanding of the nature of science during the discussion. The concepts of the nature of science took a new place in the study as the outcomes of the focus group produced by deliberate classroom structures constructed by the teacher.
Rather than focusing on generic, broad questions, the follow-up teacher interview questions focused on concrete examples. Changing the focus of questions elicited more valuable data from Jen. From these data a closer look was available regarding why Jen structures the class for inquiry and how Jen’s past school experiences influenced her decisions.
The participating teacher provided a set of the handouts that were given to students throughout the entire unit. The documents were examined for any structures that were unclear or discrepant during the observations or interviews.
Data Analysis
In analyzing the acquired data, full field notes were written up within twenty four hours of the observation. This procedure contributed to more detailed notes on the observations. All of the interviews and focus groups were audio-recorded and translated verbatim through Transana software. An entire reading of all field notes and transcriptions was completed prior to coding. Any stray ideas or reflections from the researcher were written in the form of memos (Maxwell, 1996). Memos were written for fear that the big ideas emerging from the project would be lost when line by line coding began. As the line by line coding proceeded, the researcher attempted to stay close to the actual text, rather than trying to make the ideas more abstract. By the end of the process of coding, more abstract codes were developed because themes began to emerge.
At the completion of the line-by-line coding, a matrix was composed for each document listing the coding categories. At the beginning, broad codes were avoided because of the tendency to neglect detail. When coding categories became saturated, it was decided that about a quarter of the ideas could be collapsed into the others. That left the matrix with three quarters of the ideas listed, which was still too long to establish resonating ideas. The matrix was considered in entirety and it was decided that the lists could fit into seven categories: assumptions about student thinking, intentional class structure, enduring ideas in science, the value of teamwork, science as experience, connections to science, and outside audience. Placing the class structure in context with Jen’s experiences as a student was also found important. The coding emphasized the ideas that had emerged when data was being collected and confirmed what ideas emerged from the whole reading of the text before coding.
Findings
Roles and Responsibility in Inquiry Science.
For the most part, science educators agree that inquiry science is a quality method for teaching students of all ages science content as well as science process (Association for the Advancement of Science, 1993; National Research Council, 1996). One of the barriers that most science teachers experience is that inquiry cannot happen in a didactic classroom where seats are in rows, and the teacher is the distributor of knowledge. In the didactic classroom students are accustomed to having information provided and their main task is to retain knowledge. Assessments in such classrooms are based on whether the student can offer back the information provided in class. In an inquiry classroom, the task placed on students is the construction of their own knowledge. In the process of inquiry, a question will be posed by the teacher or by a student, which is then refined so that it will be worthy of investigation. Students will then take an active role in investigating facts and develop conclusions based on the facts that were uncovered. A great deal of the responsibility for active learning is placed on the student, rather than on the teacher, as it is in a didactic model (Zeichner & Gore, 1990). Often the teacher must relearn how to structure the class so that the teacher is no longer the ultimate authority figure. The teacher needs to strike a balance between giving the students freedom to learn and guiding that student learning in a meaningful way. The students must understand how to go about learning actively and engaging in a scholarly manner.
An investigation into how Jen’s classroom operated in an inquiry science model revealed how her previous experiences as a student helped her to understand the importance of an active student role in learning. Jen describes her lack of interaction with the subject matter when she states, “I remember when I was in 7th grade, I hated science because it was taught as completely factual. You had every piece laid out for you. You didn’t get to think.” She was the type of learner that had to have ownership of the content in order to understand the connections. Laying out the facts for consumption did not allow Jen to see how she related to the material, or why learning the material mattered. In 8th grade, Jen took the initiative to learn science in an informal setting. “Our nature center back home was doing a class on karst topography . . . I wanted to do it and my science teacher told me that I didn’t have a scientific mind and I should never even think about going into science.” She took matters into her own hands in 9th grade. “I basically taught the class because my teacher was very poor and I sat there bored. . . I vowed from that point on that I would . . . get into all the AP classes.” Her experience as middle school student later emerged in her teaching style in the form of allowing students to explore. As a student she was eager to learn, but the teachers became barriers in her goals. Larochelle and Desautels (1991) recognized the importance of the teacher’s posture from which students develop the notion of the value of their knowledge. Jen understood at an early age that the teacher plays a key role in students’ access to learning. When asked why it is important to teach science, Jen responds,
“Going back to my own experience. . . I want to make it so the kids are learning something that again, they can apply the big pictures to themselves. 8th grade science I don’t know anything because I checked out. And now I wish I knew some of the stuff that he’d been talking about.”
Jen experienced a missed opportunity when the teacher prevented her from learning by not considering her role in the experience of learning. Teachers who structure their class in a didactic way prevent many students from engaging in material. Teachers, who emphasize an active student role in learning, help students gain ownership of the content.
The role of the student in inquiry is as an active knowledge seeker. Students’ main experience throughout their school career is didactic teaching, so when a teacher has a classroom that incorporates science inquiry, the student does not understand how to operate in the classroom system. Students become dependent on immediate teacher evaluation of their answers to determine the value of their knowledge (Lemke, 1990). Jen was required to retool her students to take more responsibility for their learning.
“From the first week of school, I will pose a question and let one kid answer and wait. I give that wait time . . . and I think that when I do that the kids know that there is not just one answer and I’m looking for kids to build on the previous answer. For me that seems to work better to let them discuss it more and let them create the ideas.”
Because she recognized that her classroom structures were different from the mainstream, Jen realized that she needed to show the students from the beginning that inquiry learning required the students to take on more responsibility. If students took a passive role in her class, learning would not take place. She deliberately withdrew her authority over the content to show students that they were capable of taking on the role of active learners. Jen takes her inquiry style beyond classroom structure into learning by beginning the year with an open ended activity that reveals how students attempt to classify different color M&Ms into categories. “The first day I give them an M&M lab and have them sort the M&Ms in different ways. Seeing . . . their method. . . sorting them out.” Students who have little experience in an inquiry classroom are often bound to the idea that only the teacher has answers. Jen validates that students attempts to ask and answer questions will produce learning through these types of activities. As the year progresses, Jen is able to make a smooth transition from having her students invent process skills to having her students construct new ideas through both content and process.
Jen’s students recognized the structures in her classroom management and the challenges that they faced when they entered Jen’s class. “It was different. You didn’t have to listen to the teacher instructions every single time. You got to go and find the research by yourself, which makes it more interesting than just having the information fed to you.” Jen’s students expressed that they learned better by taking on more of the responsibility for learning. This phenomenon was also found in Chin and Brown’s (2000) study where argumentation was a centerpiece to developing deeper student knowledge. The students recognized their lack of learning from a previous science class that operated on a more didactic level. “On Friday, we took some notes and on Monday we forgot what they were about.” When the teacher is the originator of the knowledge, students engage with content in the short-term. In a didactic format, there is no rationale for students learning the material in the long-term. “I don’t like that you memorize your notes and you take the test and then it is over, you don’t need to know it anymore.” When students see the source of information from an authority figure, such as the teacher, they fail to see how it relates to them and why they should engage with the material. When discussing an inquiry activity that took place in Jen’s class, students realize that the learning that took place was meaningful to them. “I think the trial (the inquiry activity) will stay in my head for a really long time. It was really interesting to me.” When it is essential for students to make their own meaning in order to complete the activity, students develop more detailed cognitive structures about the content and are more likely to commit it to long-term memory. When the structures are committed to long-term memory, then they can be accessed and applied to other situations, resulting in meaningful learning.
Freedom versus Guidelines.
Students needed explicit instruction in how to operate in an inquiry classroom structure. They were not adept at taking an active role in researching answers because their perception of science was that it is taught in a didactic way (DeSautels & Larochelle, 2005). When explaining the logistics of how their first inquiry activity took place, students talked about the learning that had to take place about how to go about learning. “Pretty much everyone was ‘wait, what are we doing’” The students were used to having all of the instructions for the process of learning explicitly presented, often in a step-by-step or cookbook format. Before learning about the new content, students needed to first understand how to develop their own process to access the information. “. . .(When the teacher) doesn’t spell everything out for you, it makes it a little harder because you had to think.” The students had cognitive dissonance with the new classroom management structure, but they saw value in it because of the potential for creativity. “Without creativity, you just are going to be doing everything the teacher says. You aren’t thinking one bit about what you are doing.” The students’ need to express themselves overcame their apathy for learning, but the students still didn’t have mechanisms so that they could operate in such a loosely-coupled system.
Jen scaffolded (Vygotsky, 1978) their prior knowledge to new ways of knowing by providing a balance between structure and freedom. Again, Jen drew upon her prior experiences to think about how to help students learn. When she was attending an informal science activity as an 8th grader, she realized that you don’t have to sit in the classroom to learn about science. “I can go out and experience it for myself and I can come up with new ideas…” Having the structure of the science activity, but having the freedom to express new ideas was an epiphany for Jen as she previously perceived science as a collection of static facts (Meyer, 2004). She realized that by providing a basic management structure and access to information, but allowing students to form their own ideas using the information, students could learn content that was meaningful. Jen sets up her classroom so she “won’t necessarily tell them the answer. I’ll turn things back to them and ask them how they think about it.” Jen provides basic guidelines for the open-ended activity and allows students to experience freedom within a loose structure.
Students also recognize the balance between structure and freedom that is necessary for inquiry science to result in successful learning. “If the science teacher said ‘do whatever you want’ then we wouldn’t be learning science. So you need the guidelines.” Students at the 7th grade level don’t have a great deal of background knowledge about science, so they rely on teacher to connect their prior knowledge to the new knowledge. “You can’t have freedom without guidelines. I mean then it would just crumple.” The students recognize that inquiry science is not conducted in a free-for-all atmosphere. There are some rules that must be followed in order for valuable learning to take place. Some students have a difficult time breaking out of the model where they are given explicit instructions for the learning process. “I think if we don’t have as many guidelines, we are a little more creative when we are doing stuff. But also we do need a lot of instructions to do stuff because we are used to following instructions.” These students express fear in getting a problem wrong because they didn’t accomplish the correct process to get at the answer. Part of the responsibility of a teacher of inquiry science is setting up a learning environment where the teacher is not the ultimate authority (Lemke, 1990) and students feel comfortable in finding diverse answers to open-ended problems.
Teacher’s Role in Inquiry.
The teacher’s role in inquiry science lies more in the setup of the learning environment than in the direct delivery of information. The learning environment must show the student evidence that they are able to form ideas and they need not go to the teacher for all of their information (Hogan, 1999). The teacher indirectly delivers information to the students by embedding the content into their learning environment. In her unit on genetics, Jen sets up an elaborate structure for student learning outcomes. She allows students to choose from three roles, each having a different interaction with the content. Jen also structures a culminating activity, a mock trial, which gives her students an opportunity to discuss the connections among the information they learned. The structure is built to give the students some guidance through the roles they portray, and it gives students freedom to explore their topic through research. The structure of the unit also provides validation for student-generated ideas through the mock trial. Jen builds these structures because it makes students responsible for internalizing the material. If the students did not interact with the content, the mock trial would fail to exist.
Jen’s ubiquitous underlying structure for inquiry learning is the development of larger ideas from a collection of facts. Successful teacher structures such as the development of larger ideas from a collection of facts was also found in Beeth’s (1998) study of an elementary classroom. In her unit on genetics, students are given a general rubric as a support structure in their research and to guide them to the design of their paper. Students are expected to collect facts from various reliable sources and generate original ideas in the paper. During the class times when research took place, Jen monitored the learning of her students by fielding questions and by proof reading drafts of the papers. Jen’s role during the teaching of the unit consists of her being there to help students to the next level of the process. She embeds an assigned research paper within the framework of investigation because it helps the students to verbalize the collection of facts they bring to the trial. Within this structure lies a delicate balance between guidance and freedom that was observed in Jen’s classroom throughout the unit.
Students continued to revert back to the didactic model, where the teacher tells the student what to do to learn, when they asked Jen to explicitly tell them what to do. As one student expressed, “I think more specific instructions would have helped. Like she (Jen) has a tendency to say here research this and the other teachers tell you what to do down to every last detail.” Jen had to actively withdraw from her position of authority in order to let the students engage with the material (Hogan, 1999).
Jen initiates this shift in authority by exercising the students’ acceptance for ambiguity in loosely structured laboratory activities. Where students are used to having “cookbook” labs where each step is explained in detail, Jen provides questions from which students can construct their own steps (Gijlers & deJong, 2005). “I will give them very basic steps for setting up their control and that is it. So they have to think thorough . . . “ Jen builds up students’ tolerance for ambiguity in science by maintaining that the students can develop their own ideas if they take careful observations and try to see connections. She “frontloads” the information for the student in the form of the basic guidelines and the student carries out the experiment, even if it yields different information than the others.
Sometimes the inquiry structure yields less than optimal student learning, which needs to be monitored by the teacher (Chin & Brown, 2000). In an inquiry lab involving brine shrimp, Jen observed two different learning outcomes from two groups of students. “(One group) wasn’t able to draw on their previous information because they were only testing salt. And then, by chance, one of their cups was place in an area that was warmer, and so they developed this idea on their own after seeing their results.” While another group only understood connections when they looked at other student’s research. “They weren’t able to think of these concepts and develop the ideas.” Both Jen and her students see student errors as an opportunity to learn. Jen sees students as having different levels of abstract cognitive ability at the 7th grade, but even concrete learners find meaningful learning in inquiry. “Going and researching, you may not understand what they (the researchers) are talking about, but later on as you gain more knowledge, you understand how to do that and you will be able to understand what that background stuff you looked up is saying.” Jen’s students understand the value in reviewing your errors in inquiry learning. “When they say, here you are supposed to get this answer, and you don’t and you get something totally different, you say ‘Why did I get something totally different?’ and you actually want to figure it out.” In an inquiry structure, students learn process and content when they are right and when they are wrong. In a didactic structure, students do not learn the process of learning and if they are given incorrect information, it is often overlooked and tends to develop misconceptions with the students.
Student and Teacher Mechanisms to Cope
with Inquiry Process
The students in Jen’s class understood the importance of inquiry learning and have developed some important criteria in their construction of process skills. Through my classroom observations, I recognized two informal criteria that the students developed that helped them define the process of inquiry learning: teamwork and work ethic. Jen encouraged teamwork by establishing a seating arrangement where small groups of students could have quiet discussions at their tables, which seated at least four students face-to-face. Students exhibited teamwork by listening to their peers and recognizing that science is a social activity. Due to the shift in authority from the teacher to the students, there is no one decisive authority for information. Students in Jen’s class developed ways of coping with the redefined roles of teacher and student. By listening to peers, students checked the logic of the content they were developing. “Greg and I shared a lot of our facts and ideas that we got because we were both judges (a role at the trial.) And then we got them (ideas) from all of the experts.” Students felt more comfortable with the validity of the facts if more students heard them and approved of the ideas (Gijlers & deJong, 2005).
Work ethic was intentionally placed into the inquiry structure through means of the culminating activity and was reinforced by the participating students. All students in Jen’s class, although they had different roles and content to research, were working toward a common goal, the mock trial. It was clear to all of the students that if you didn’t do the work that was expected of you, the trial would not run smoothly. Jen explicitly talked about the interdependence (Johnson & Johnson, 1999) of the three roles in the trial: the judges, the experts and the lawyers. During the student research classes, Jen would visit individual students and check on their progress toward their part of the work. Jen’s students demonstrated a value in work ethic by working diligently on the project from the beginning of the class period until the end of the class period. During one class period, the school had a weather emergency drill, and by the time the students returned to the science classroom, there was one minute left of class time. Students continued to work during that one minute. One of Jen’s students explained why it was important to work hard in order to have quality ideas by the time the mock trial took place.
“Like the trial, you were going to be part of the contribution. The lawyers, experts each role had their part. Without the experts, the lawyers can’t make their point. The experts, there wouldn’t be any use without the judges, there wouldn’t be any decision. So each part contributed to the whole trial.”
During the classroom research, students were very engaged and had some interactions that kept straying students on task. In one instance a girl was showing a boy at her table a picture from a book that didn’t relate to her topic. The boy noticed another student at another table who needed the book and explained to the girl that if she wasn’t going to use the book for research, he was going to give it to the boy who needed it. The exchange occurred without resistance. Students understood that you had to work hard to achieve the common goal.
Student Outcomes.
An inquiry environment yields different student learning outcomes than a didactic classroom structure. Enduring ideas about interconnected concepts are a learning outcome in an inquiry structured classroom (Hogan & Maglienti, 2001). Students in Jen’s class expressed their dissatisfaction with the focus on detailed facts in a previous class that had a more didactic setting. “At the end of the year, I know everyone does this, you forget everything. You cover details, details, details, . . . You just need to cover the important stuff and that will stick in your head, not the little stuff.” Since students are constructing their own knowledge in an inquiry setting, the focus of learning is not on minuscule facts that are disconnected from any enduring ideas. Students’ learning in inquiry focuses on how the topic they are studying fits into what they already know. If they can hook the new ideas onto what they already understand, students can build knowledge. Jen builds in classroom management techniques that assess students’ prior knowledge so that she can help them understand new material.
Validity and
Limitations
During this study, several checks on validity were incorporated. A variety of data sources were drawn from to form conclusions. Teacher perceptions were developed through interviews, student learning and perceptions were developed through a focus group, checks on the gaps between teacher perception and performance were in place during the three classroom observations. Checks were made on the organization of the class through a document analysis of the handouts given during the observed unit. During the focus groups and the final interview various member checks were performed to determine if observations were aligned with the intention of the behavior of the participants. Member checks also helped interpretation of the data with regard to participants. Codes were initially made to be broad and close to the verbatim text, and then formed more abstract categories from the codes. This process facilitated the grounding of abstract conclusions in concrete words and actions and helped to remain loyal to the intentions of the participants, instead of imposing researcher ideas onto their words and actions. Another check to the validity of conclusions was the emerging nature of the research questions. The conclusions regarding the influence of classroom management on inquiry science were not expected and formed late in the study, so there were no preconceived notions as to the relationship between them. Researcher bias was also kept in check by the feedback received from reflecting on the various research memos.
Some limitations on conclusions could come from the researcher’s understanding of the school structure studied. The researcher is a teacher at the same building where the study was implemented and the researcher may have been oblivious to factors that influenced student learning or teacher planning on inquiry science due to her knowledge of the system. Another limitation lie in the understanding that the first interview with Jen did not yield rich data because the questions were vague and general. Improved questioning techniques were utilized in the following interviews, but data could have been more revealing if all interviews consisted of diverse questions.
Discussion
A Dot-to-Dot Puzzle Metaphor.
Inquiry is not accomplished by merely looking around for answers in books and by performing experimentation. Meaningful inquiry requires structure so that students will interact with the important content. Inquiry lessons where the teacher takes into consideration student prior knowledge and academic experiences can help students develop intricate frameworks of conceptual knowledge. Teachers who teach through didactic means treat science as a collection of facts in their final form (Duschl, 1990) and do not provide the environment necessary to connect discrete factual information into conceptual knowledge. Didactic science lessons give labs that are in a cookbook structure, where students follow the steps, go through the motions and verify a result that they already knew. A metaphor for such a didactic process is a teacher who gives students a traditional dot-to-dot puzzle and tells the students what the drawing should look like. Jen’s students talked about such cookbook labs as being anti-climactic. “. . . if you know the ending, you don’t have to do the lab. . . You just heard about it and took her word for it, but you don’t know how it got there.” Setting up an environment that fosters inquiry takes more than just hands-on activities. Jen’s class is the assignment of a dot-to-dot puzzle without numbers. Jen expects students to take responsibility for their own learning and doesn’t tell students what picture is formed from connecting the dots. She lets students figure out the connections and how it forms a picture. Students rely on other students to share information to figure out the puzzle. Some students can add dots to puzzle through independent discoveries to make a more refined picture. Jen incorporates checks during her lessons to be sure that everyone has the same general picture drawn from their dots. When students need scaffolding to get past a difficult area in the puzzle, Jen provides a few numbers to keep their momentum going. Sometimes students end up with slightly different pictures from the same puzzle, but all of the pictures are meaningful to the students and represent the same conceptual knowledge.
Implications
Despite the efforts of many reform movements, science is usually taught in the classroom as a rigid body of knowledge to be acquired rather than a way of knowing. Many of the reform efforts ignore teachers’ existing knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes (van Driel, Beijaard & Verloop, 2001). Jen’s experiences as a student led her to value freedom in student learning and as a result chose inquiry as a tool for learning. Science teachers continue to exclusively teach scientific knowledge, ignoring the inherent ideas that guide the attainment of the knowledge (Duschl, Hamilton & Grandy, 1992). More information is needed regarding the decisions teachers make to effectively implement inquiry.
Student-initiated science explorations under the conditions of uncertainty should be valued so that students are able to construct ways of investigating and knowing in science (Crawford, Kelly & Brown, 2000). Currently, teachers use discourse processes that position science and science teachers as authorities (Moje, 1997). Giving teachers tangible processes for conducting student-initiated science explorations is a step in moving beyond traditional teacher as sole authority teaching models. Having students construct their knowledge by social means makes learning science more authentic and helps students to reconcile the conflict they experience when learning that science knowledge is tentative. Socially constructing knowledge in an inquiry setting is one way of making science less obscure for students. Teachers are inexperienced at managing discussions that allow for different viewpoints on scientific ideas to be argued (Driver, 1989), so identifying tangible structures in classroom management could help teacher become more experienced at this task. The culture of science is passed down from generation to generation through science classes. If each generation receives the idea that science is a body of knowledge and has no access to the nature of science, knowledge about how science generates and verifies knowledge will no longer be part of the public’s understanding of science. Education has a responsibility to teach students how to think like a scientist in order to continue to have progressive, critical thinkers in our technological future.
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Figure 1: Semi-structured Interview and Focus Group Questions
Teacher Participant Pre-Observation Interview Script
Teacher Participant Post-Observation Interview Script
Student Participant Interview Script