Running Header: INQUIRING ABOUT INQUIRY 1

Inquiring About Inquiry: Creating Clarity From Confusion

Taver Rice

Vancouver Island University

May 28, 2017

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Inquiring About Inquiry: Creating Clarity From Confusion

Introduction

I am an aspiring secondary school biology teacher but was actually a lazy student

when I was in high school. I refused to do homework outside of class time, generally

avoided studying, and presumably got away with such actions due to good grades and

relatively good behaviour. My laziness carried over into my early university years and

perhaps even initially intensified in the freer university environment where even attendance

wasnt mandatory. Yet here I am, many years later, firmly set on the path of becoming a

teacher. What changed? Nothing. Ive always loved learning and Ive always loved sharing

what I learned. School didnt diminish that for me, it was just kind of a non-event in my life

with regards to learning. School certainly wasnt an avenue for me to explore my own

interests and passions, it wasnt even an environment for sharing my interests and passions.

In fact, this is one of the reasons I was so protective of my time outside of school. I wanted to

use this free time to learn about and explore the things that did interest me, from wolf

biology to animal behaviour, basketball to tennis, scuba diving to marine ecosystems... the

list goes on. The truth is I invested a lot of time and energy learning about things that were

interesting to me precisely because I found them interesting. This self-driven approach to

learning continues today and while I eventually transferred learning skills such as research,

time management, and critical thinking skills over to my academic life, it is arguably my self-

directed learning that has been of the greatest benefit to me. Many of my work opportunities,

much of my knowledge, and almost all of my recreational activities are a result of self-

directed, inquiry based learning practices.

When I realized a passion for sharing, teaching, and empowering others underlay

many of my life experiences and began seriously considering a teaching career, I was excited

to learn about the pending changes to British Columbias education curriculum. The new
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curriculums focus on individualized learning and harnessing students passions, interests,

and curiosity to motivate and engage students in their own learning reflects my experience

and understanding of a powerful and effective learning process. I knew this approach could

be successfully applied in both the workplace and in ones personal life and was excited at

the potential benefits of implementing something similar in the education system. I had an

idealistic vision of diverse, motivated, and engaged students pursuing their own interests and

passions in an individualized learning environment, but had difficulty imagining what this

would actually look like in the high school classroom. In my experience inquiry is an entirely

self-driven process with the individual first identifying the personal need or knowledge gap

that they both want and need to address, then developing and executing a learning plan in

pursuit of the desired results, and finally deciding when their learning goals have been

achieved and what, if any, application of learning will take place. I struggled to reconcile this

vision of self-directed and open-ended inquiry with government mandated content and

competencies. While applications for teacher education programs often asked me to

articulate my understanding of and vision for such student-driven, inquiry based practices I

was thankfully not asked to provide ideas for implementation. My assumption was ideas for

implementation would be part of a teaching education program, helping aspiring educators

learn how to make these visions a reality.

Since starting the Post-Baccalaureate (Secondary) Teacher Program (EDPB) at

Vancouver Island University (VIU) I have become much more familiar with the new BC

Curriculum. The new curriculum definitely highlights inquiry and inquiry-based learning as

successful, student driven approaches that allow for increased personalization, improved

student engagement, and the development of lifelong learning skills. What the new

curriculum doesnt do is explain what inquiry actually looks like in the classroom. Instead the

BC Ministry of Education says that inquiry is a process that, ...does not a follow a set
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process or program. Different authors and organizations have proposed many different

models of inquiry. (BC Ministry of Education, 2016). I also encounter the idea of inquiry on

a regular and frequent basis in my education program but rarely encounter anything in the

program that I recognize as inquiry in practice or methodologies for implementing inquiry in

the classroom.

Our first semester EDPB classes were wonderful in that they regularly referenced

inquiry and extolled the positive benefits associated with inquiry, including a metacognitive

understanding of ones learning process in addition to the benefits outlined above, but none

of them moved beyond this in any meaningful way for me as a budding science teacher. What

little I did see was mostly in the humanities areas. Our English Language Arts instructor

talked about things like essay writing with student-determined content or novel studies with

student-chosen books, with the students passion for the subjects driving the process. These

approaches seemed problematic from the science point of view. While the content of an essay

is often irrelevant to learning the process of writing an essay, the content of a science lesson

is often itself the actual learning goal. This same situation held true in our Principles of

Teaching class as well, with socials studies or the performing arts subject areas often being

used as exemplars in which the learning again seemed more process oriented rather than

content driven. I found myself wondering how a student could possibly choose appropriate

science content to explore, or generate good questions to drive an inquiry process when, at

the high school level, most information or content needs are still determined by the teacher.

How would a student even know to ask about meiosis or ionic bonding without direct

guidance? Yet I regard this identification or determination of ones own knowledge gap as

crucial to the inquiry process as I understand it.

I think it was about this time I started developing a sense that inquiry in the science

classroom was somehow different from inquiry as it was generally used and referenced in
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education and as it related to my own personal experiences. Yet I still wasnt clear on exactly

how they differed, nor was I clear that they needed to be different, especially since the

language around inquiry, including its use and associated benefits, remained the same

regardless of subject area. I thought perhaps subject differentiation and separation, artificial

as the imposed boundaries might be, might be the source of this feeling and I might thus be

mistaken about inquiry in science being somehow different.

As this subject was on my mind and the university semester was raising more

questions than answers I was excited about the practicum placement at Dover Bay Secondary.

I hoped to see inquiry in practice and discuss the process of inquiry with practicing teachers

to begin to address some of my knowledge gaps. Unfortunately I didnt see anything in the

STEM 8 class I was observing that I would consider inquiry. Instead the teaching followed

very traditional methodologies (lectures, examples, and worksheets), enacted with modern

tools (videos to supplement lectures, projected powerpoints and worksheets to provide

examples, electronic worksheets along with paper, recorded responses as an alternative to

written responses to paragraph questions or essays, etc.), and with very traditional results

(minimal engagement and enthusiasm, all students doing the same work). When I asked the

teacher about incorporating inquiry into the classroom the response was that the teachers

were all working really hard to provide their students with options. They were, for example,

leaving it up to the students to create an analogy to explain cell structures and functions.

Students were also being given choices around demonstrating their learning using videos,

comic strips, or essays, for example. I was left feeling even more confused about inquiry, as
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this explanation seeme to be more about providing student choice in execution, not about

investigative inquiry for the purposes of learning.

I also took advantage of being at Dover Bay to observe a Biology 11 classroom with a

different teacher. He was also very traditional, both in his approach and his tools, following a

lecture and note taking format that could have been lifted from my own high school

experiences 25 years ago. While we didnt discuss inquiry directly he did make it very clear

in our conversations that he felt the content he was teaching was essential to set the students

up for ongoing academic success and that his approach was a time-tested and effective

delivery method for achieving this. His markers for success were both student performance

on government standardized testing and the subsequent achievements of his former students

at various post-secondary institutions.

As the first semester came to a close I felt no clearer on the subject of inquiry than I

did at the beginning of the semester, except for this vague sense that inquiry in science is

somehow different than inquiry in the humanities and that defining or explaining exactly

what inquiry is is problematic. In summarizing the semesters learning our university

science instructor did point out two lessons that he considered examples of inquiry. In one we

were challenged to develop, with a few limited tools provided for us, our own experiment to

determine the absorbency of various paper towels relative to each other. In the other we were

challenged to create our own evolutionary tree based on drawings of a number of made-up

lifeforms. In both instances the question we were attempting to answer originated externally,

the equipment or data was given to us, but the process was otherwise open-ended. For the
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first situation we needed to design our own experimental process and the outcome was not

pre-determined. For the second we needed to create our own sorting criteria based on the

information available to us and the final outcome was again not pre-determined. This was my

first hint that my understanding of inquiry might need to be adjusted, and combined with my

earlier outlined experiences suggested I needed to first develop my understanding of what

inquiry in the science classroom is before figuring out how best to implement it in my own

classroom.

My action research project is designed to clarify my understanding of what inquiry is,

what it looks like in the science classroom and to develop ideas for implementing it in my

own classroom. Initially I will be accessing the education literature, holding informal

conversations with my university instructors, sponsor teachers, and student teacher

colleagues, observing as many different classrooms as I am able to, and seeking student input

where possible to inform my understanding of inquiry in the science classroom. Once I have

established this understanding I will then work to develop strategies and tools to implement

inquiry into my own classrooms. Given the scope of my project and the time frame involved,

this paper will only cover the initial literature research, informal discussions, and classroom

observations that will lay the groundwork for the future action research.

Literature/Theoretical Framework

There is a wealth of information related to inquiry in the classroom but I struggled to

find any clear explanation for what inquiry actually is. As Leonard and Penick (2009) point

out, Inquiry can be an elusive concept, despite the fact that many descriptions and examples

are available in the research literature. This was certainly my experience. Eventually,

after narrowing my search to inquiry in the science classroom only, I realized that while the
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definitions of inquiry may be absent or vary, the feature common to most articles was the

presence of a scientific experiment (Leonard & Penick, 2009; Smith, 2010; Zion & Sadeh,

2010). Capps and Crawford (2013) provided one explanation for this similarity with their

explanation that science inquiry instruction is a set of practices derived from what scientists

do in their work. Learners are responsible for asking and answering scientifically oriented

questions, using and prioritizing evidence to support their explanations, and connecting their

explanations to scientific knowledge. Capps and Crawford (2013) identify the heart of the

matter as the learner grappling with data to make some kind of sense of an event or

phenomena. This explanation, of inquiry in the science classroom specifically being the

process of scientific inquiry, allowed me to connect the diverse articles I was encountering

and also gave me a means to explain the difference between general classroom inquiry and

inquiry in the science class that I had sensed but been unable to articulate.

Continuing to examine the literature around inquiry in the middle school and high

school science classrooms three main themes developed. One was to note that in spite of the

supposed benefits associated with an inquiry approach few teachers were actually practicing

this way and the literature was thus focused on examining ways to better support teachers in

implementing inquiry practices in their classrooms. Most of these articles looked at some

sort of professional development program for in-service and/or pre-service teachers (Capps &

Crawford, 2013; Ertmer, Schlosser, Clase, & Adedokun, 2014; Gilman, Hitt, & Gilman,

2015) that combined real science investigations with instruction about scientific inquiry

processes as well as discussion, and occasionally development, of scientific inquiries that

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could be done in the classroom. The programs ranged from two week intensives (all day for

two weeks) to more drawn out but less intense time frames (meeting once a week or once a

month for longer periods), but all met with favorable results in improving teacher knowledge

of and comfort with scientific inquiry and proposed such training become a part of science

teacher education programs and/or professional development programs.

The second theme in the literature was the provision of an example of a scientific

inquiry activity or tool for use in the classroom. Smith (2010), Leonard and Penick (2009),

Bordenstein et al. (2010), and Bethel, Casey, and Lieberman (2014) are all exemplars of this

type, though each of them is different from the others. Smith provides a concrete example in

which she poses a researchable question, namely how to design a lab to show the fastest way

to dissolve a sugar cube. Leonard and Peck similarly use a concrete example, in this instance

students inability to catch a falling dollar bill, and show how this can generate interest, spark

curiosity, and provide a jumping off point for a number of student-led inquires. Bordenstein

et al. offer students an opportunity to help collect and manipulate data as part of a larger,

ongoing scientific experiment, while Bethel, Casey, and Lieberman provide information and

suggestions for how an online tool can be used to help students explore protein structure and

function more easily. While all of these supposedly fall within the general category of

scientific inquiry, Leonard and Peck at least would challenge the veracity of those claims. In

addition to providing an exemplar, Leonard and Penicks article also raises the question about

whether or not inquiry as it is practiced in the classroom is real inquiry, and they suggest

criteria for determining inquiry veracity as well as providing their example. According to
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their criteria, the above mentioned examples provided by Bordenstein et al. and Bethel et al.

do not qualify as real examples of scientific inquiry. Leonard and Penick believe students

should be responsible for almost everything, though the researchable questions mays be

posed externally. The Bordenstein et al. experiments involve students collecting data and

performing scientific procedures, but the students themselves are not utilizing that data to

draw any meaningful conclusions. Instead they are contributing to a larger data collection for

other scientists to use. Bethel et al. review a unit and lesson plans to have students explore the

structure and function of various proteins in greater detail than usually covered in high

school. Most steps are clearly prescribed, whether lecture or lab based, though students do get

to investigate their own medical history and choose a genetic disease to investigate. Both

experiments would fall into the categories of rote learning or verification learning according

to Leonard and Penick while Capps and Crawford (2013) would similarly say that the two

experiments miss the heart of the process which is the student grappling to make sense of

data to explain an event or phenomena. I include this as another example illustrating the

amorphous nature of scientific inquiry, as even within this reasonably well-defined category

of inquiry, and within one of the recognized thematic areas, there is confusion and debate

over what exactly scientific inquiry entails.

The final theme focused on the outcome of a program of scientific inquiry enacted at

the middle or high school level (Gilman, Hitt, & Gilman, 2015; Zion & Sadeh, 2010).

Gilman et al., for example, measured an improvement in student understanding of targeted

concepts taught using inquiry and found a significant improvement in 79% of the lessons
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taught this way. Zion and Sadeh, on the other hand, were interested in the use of scientific

inquiry to facilitate greater understanding of the Nature of Science (NOS), specifically

around the complex and abstract ideas that scientific knowledge is tentative and that scientific

knowledge is empirical. They examined a program in which students were involved in a

biology-based open inquiry learning process for evidence of student learning around these

two ideas. They concluded that two thirds of the student experiments showed evidence of

student learning about the tentative nature of scientific knowledge while one third of the

experiments show evidence of student learning that scientific knowledge is empirical.

Interestingly I found one paper examining the supposed connections between scientific

inquiry, student engagement and student scientific literacy (McConney, Oliver, Woods-

McConney, Schibeci, & Maor, 2014) that completely contradicted the findings mentioned

above. McConney et al. found that a the level of scientific inquiry in the classroom was

positively correlated with the level of student engagement in the sciences but negatively

correlated with scientific literacy. Thus a high level of inquiry led to high student engagement

but a low level of scientific literacy while a low level of inquiry led to low student

engagement but a high level of scientific literacy. This suggests to me that just as there is no

clear definition for what inquiry is there is no definitive way to deliver an inquiry experience,

nor are there guaranteed benefits associated with its delivery. Indeed, several papers called

for explicit teaching of NOS alongside scientific inquiry to help ensure the benefits of a

scientific inquiry approach were realized (Capps & Crawford, 2013; Schwartz, Lederman, &

Crawford, 2003; Zion & Sadeh, 2010).

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When considering the discrepancy between the expected benefits associated with

inquiry and the actual findings of the McConney et al. analysis I found myself considering

the overall content usually taught in science classes. While scientific inquiry is the basis of all

scientific knowledge, and understanding it is thus an important part of understanding science

and being a scientifically literate citizen, much of what happens in the science classroom is

still about content transmission. Scientific knowledge is based on hundreds of years of

experimentation and most decisions and modern practices are built on a fundamental

understanding of the knowledge thus gained. To be scientifically literate citizens also requires

students to possess at least some of this fundamental knowledge in addition to understanding

the process of scientific inquiry. While the PISA test is supposed to be content-independent

and instead focus on scientific principles it seems to me that it would difficult to separate the

two completely or even effectively from each other. Considering this I found myself

wondering if scientific inquiry was the only way to employ inquiry in the science classroom.

After all, other subjects utilize inquiry without employing scientific inquiry. In fact, content

transmission is generally the larger part of science instruction and labs, even conventionally

constructed ones, are generally inherently more engaging for students. Was there a way

inquiry could be used to improve content transmission, comprehension, and retention?

One of my classmates introduced me to an action research study comparing the

efficacy of lecture based learning with problem-based learning (PBL) in the junior science

classroom (Wong & Day, 2010). The problem in this example was a case-based problem

which was structured to require students to achieve the curriculum and learning objectives as
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they worked in small groups to find the problems solution. The outcome of the comparison

suggested that PBL was as effective, and in terms of long-term retention possibly even more

effective, than traditional lecture based learning. The authors also observed a seeming

improvement in intrinsic motivation for the students engaged in PBL over lecture based

learning. I broadened my search to include PBL to see if this might provide a means of

introducing general inquiry into the science classroom.

Once again I found a wealth of information in the literature but a lack of clarity. PBL

could mean both problem-based learning and project-based learning, which were themselves

sometimes regarded as totally different things and sometimes as the same thing, or at least

interrelated . Both PBL and project-based learning could be considered as falling under the

inquiry umbrella or as being a totally separate way to approach learning. I decided to include

both PBL and project-based learning in my personal definition of inquiry and expanded my

search to include both areas. Complete school programs based on project-based learning

exist, including The Energetic Learning Campus, a project-based learning program of North

Peace Secondary School in Ft. St. John, BC. and High Tech High, a network of 13 project-

based learning schools found in the state of California in the US. The presence of these

schools or programs which operate almost entirely on a problem- or project-based learning

platform reveal one of the unique features I discovered with regards to this type of learning,

namely that the approach becomes the dominant organizing feature of the school, program, or

course and rarely seems to be used as an additional tool in a regular classroom. I did not
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pursue this any further, though Yeo and Tan (2014) suggest that students need to develop a

separate set of problem solving skills to be successful. It may be that a shorter time frame, as

in a unit or lesson, either does not allow for such skill development to occur in which case the

problem solving suffers, or the skill development learning happens at the expense of the

actual problem solving within the given time constraints.

With regards to the literature the same three themes that emerged in my inquiry

research also arose with regards to problem and project based learning, namely papers that

highlighted the need to support and develop teacher skills in delivering problem/project based

learning (Ertmer et al, 2014), examples of a problem or project that could be used (Gonda et

al, 2015; Matthews, Huffling, & Benavides, 2014), and studies examining the efficacy of a

problem or project based teaching approach (Ferreira & Trudel, 2012; Kang, DeChenne &

Smith, 2012). As with the inquiry literature there is even a suggestion that not all PBL is

created equally. Yeo, Tan, and Lee argue that some purported PBL is merely content-

acquisition learning enacted through activities (as cited in Yeo & Tan, 2014).

It was about this time I stumbled across Prince and Felders (2007) paper examining

different ways to teach and learn inductively, including inquiry, problem based learning,

project based learning, and case-based learning. Prince and Felder defined inquiry as, Any

instruction that begins with a challenge for which the required knowledge has not been

previously provided (p. 15). According to this definition, all inductive teaching

methodologies technically count as inquiry, merely varying in the nature of the challenge and

amount and type of support provided by the instructor. Finally I had a definition that made
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sense, encompassed the learning I had done so far, and incorporated a wide array of teaching

and learning strategies! Prince and Felder also examined the strengths of and the challenges

with each inductive approach, along with the instructional demands of each approach. For

example, problem-based learning was identified as building excellent problem solving skills

and abilities in students but more likely to provoke student resistance and resentment while

constructing appropriate problems was determined to be very time consuming for the

instructor with effective execution similarly demanding in terms of instructor skill and

knowledge. Project-based learning, on the other hand, was determined to be a little bit easier

to execute, both in terms of project creation and in terms of demands on both instructor and

students, though this ease comes with a reduction in the array of skills the students acquire,

being more specific to that one project.

Based on my own struggles to understand inquiry in the hopes of applying it in the

classroom and on the recurring theme of needing to support learning and development of new

and existing teachers to develop inquiry-teaching skills I also explored the literature for

additional ideas on how to achieve this learning and development outside of a prescribe

development program. While no easy answers were forthcoming, I did encounter a few

recurring themes. One was the need for supportive administration to ease the often-rough

transition from content-driven teaching to inquiry-based teaching, especially as the end-goals

for the two methods are not necessarily the same (Towers, 2012; and Turski, 2015). In

content-driven teaching content mastery or at least content acquisition is often the goal, while

inquiry-based teaching is often focused on student empowerment and problem solving or

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learning ability. This difference is further compounded by assessment practices that are still

focused on content. (Yeo & Tan, 2014; Towers, 2012, Turski, 2015).

A second theme was the need for a supportive community of teachers with which to

share ideas and/or practice, both to develop ones own abilities and also to provide support

and encouragement when difficulties arising from such a substantial shift in practice arise

(Ertmer et al, 2014; Spronken-Smith & Harland, 2010; Turski, 2015).

Finally, more recent articles are beginning to provide more concrete tools and

suggestions for incorporating inquiry into ones practice. The more concrete inquiry methods

such as scientific inquiry or case-based inquiry tend to yield more concrete results. Harris and

Burke (2008), for example, provide an outline for teaching scientific inquiry through an

initial field based inquiry that then sets the stage for ongoing scientific inquiries in the

classroom while the University of Buffalo hosts the National Center for Case Study Teaching

in Science which includes a website that archives various science-based case studies.

Unfortunately most of these cases are designed for post-secondary education, but there are

some designed for middle and high school.

Suggestions for more general inquiry implementation arising in STEM classes tended

to focus on the inclusion of purposeful, thoughtful questions specifically designed to elicit

higher order thinking in students (belcastro, 2016; Doree, 2016). These articles provide ideas

that could be adapted for inquiry-based content delivery in the science classroom. belcastro

notes that asking effective questions and following up with fruitful inquiry are both skills that

take time to develop and that students therefore require ongoing opportunities to develop
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these skills. belcastro advocates for embedding such structural practices in ongoing classes

and offers up examples from various calculus courses while acknowledging that they do not

and cannot serve as a guide because of the context and instructor specific nature of such

instruction, but that they can serve as a suggestive example. Doree also functions in the

mathematics realm and focuses on questioning, but she focuses specifically on the alteration

of traditional tools (textbooks) and approaches (asking students to find a solution) in ways

that promote inquiry and student engagement but that require minimal advance preparation.

At its simplest she suggests reframing equations as questions, an approach that has the

potential to be modified to fit almost any subject area, though the follow up experiences will

likely need more preparation than in the symbolically rich, abstract world of higher order

mathematics.

In addition to examining the literature I also discussed inquiry with my sponsor

teachers, other science teachers, several university instructors, and my classmates.

Conversations with my instructors and my classmates were revealing in that no one was able

to clearly explain just what inquiry was. One of my instructors explained inquiry as occurring

anytime a question drives student learning, yet that same instructor didnt feel that most

textbook questions and many teacher initiated questions were examples of inquiry learning

but was unable to clearly explain their reasoning. The classmates I spoke with from all

disciplines generally expressed confusion regarding inquiry saying they really didnt

understand it or know what it looked like. Most of the science student teachers felt that

inquiry as they understood it was not applicable to the science classroom even though they
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couldnt explain what inquiry was. Instead they suggested high school students lacked the

fundamental knowledge of science to be able to ask good questions or design useful and

informative experiments. Only one student teacher I spoke with felt they had any ideas for

implementing inquiry in the science classroom. That idea was to teach the content

traditionally and then ask the students a question that could be answered based on that

content but that also afforded students the opportunity to deepen their understanding if they

chose. The example provided was to, after looking at the properties and behaviour of light,

challenge students to explain how eyeglasses corrected vision. Again, depending upon how

one chooses to define inquiry this may or may not be considered as such. Certainly this is not

an example of a scientific inquiry as it involves no experimentation or data analysis. Nor is it

a problem-based inquiry in which the solution encompasses the learning objective. Instead

this is an example of synthesis and application of learning to answer an externally initiated

question, which may be a good teaching methodology but certainly doesnt fit with my

understanding of inquiry. I use this as another example to point out the elusive nature of

inquiry and perhaps illuminate why the idea of inquiry is regularly discussed in the teaching

program but rarely in any practical way.

I also made a point of discussing inquiry with my sponsor teachers. Indeed, I was

doing this even before I formally took on this action research project as mentioned in the

introduction. This semester I was placed at John Barsby Secondary School in Nanaimo, BC

and worked with two sponsor teachers in the science department. One is approaching the end

of a successful teaching career and acknowledged that until this point inquiry has not been a
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part of their classroom environment. As a senior level science instructor they are currently

working to wrap their head around what inquiry might look like in their classroom, but are at

the beginning stages of the process and have no ideas as of yet. I taught their Biology 11 class

with 24 students, for one week in March. My teaching approach for the week was fairly

traditional but I did take the opportunity to ask students, what do you wish this class had

more of? as an anonymous ticket out the door question at the end of the week. I purposefully

asked the question this way to elicit the widest range of responses and to see if anything

approaching inquiry was forthcoming. All 22 of the answers I received fell well within the

traditional teaching scope (more videos, less videos, more textbook, less textbook, more solo

work, more group work, etc.) with the closest response to inquiry being one students wish

for more hands on learning. These statements likely reflect the academic experiences of

the students to date and suggests that these students have likely not encountered anything

approaching inquiry to this point.

My second sponsor teacher is mid-career, teaches both junior and senior sciences, and

as a junior science teacher is responsible for teaching the new curriculum this year. Our first

discussion about inquiry took place on an observation day in early February and resulted in

an impassioned speech about inquiry in the science classroom being different from inquiry in

other subject areas, along with expressions of frustration about the current obsession with

inquiry. Subsequent conversations revealed that inquiry as understood by my sponsor is

scientific inquiry, and particularly student-initiated scientific inquiry. Their frustration with

the current focus on inquiry in the widespread education community stems from a perceived
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lack of understanding that scientific inquiry and general inquiry are different. This teacher

utilizes mostly traditional, lecture and assignment based teaching methodologies and

traditional lab set-ups. However, they are also incorporating some scientific inquiry into their

practice to educate students about the scientific inquiry process and about NOS. Prior to my

arrival in the classroom students were introduced to the scientific inquiry process via a guided

inquiry. Students were tasked with building a marshmallow catapult out of provided

materials and then asked to improve their design by changing one thing. The teacher guided

students through the process, challenging them with questions designed to elicit an

understanding of the inquiry process and the need to collect data, for example, or to consider

the impact of variables outside their control or consideration. The students were then told

they would need to design and execute their own experiment before the semester was over,

that modifying class labs were a good starting place if they were unsure where to begin or

lacked ideas, and that as the semester progressed and they engaged in (prescribed) labs they

should be thinking of this. As the semester progressed students would be reminded of this

task when performing class labs and at the end of the semester would put their plan into

action. Other junior science teachers in the same department were beginning to experiment

with the same process in their own classes, but were in the early stages of the process and it

was not yet a universally adopted practice.

After learning about the catapult experiment I did converse with a few of the students

about their experiences. Four of the five students I spoke with regarded the experiment as fun

but were unable to articulate their learning, even when prompted with leading questions such
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as, Why did you only change that (one thing)?, with the most common response being

thats what they were told to do. The fifth student was much more articulate, commenting on

the need to control variables to accurately determine effect of any change. However, this

student also told me on my first day of observation that they were debating a career as an

embryologist or a reproductive endocrinologist, suggesting a higher than average level of

scientific knowledge.

Further Reflection and First Action Steps

My goal with this part of the action research project was to develop an understanding

of what inquiry is, what inquiry looks like in the science classroom, and to begin developing

ideas for implementing inquiry into my own practice. At this point I feel like I have a much

better understanding of inquiry in general, as well as an understanding of why it is so difficult

to define as it encompasses so many different activities and approaches and is also context

and teacher specific. Prince and Felders (2007) definition of inquiry as instruction that

begins with a challenge for which the required knowledge has not been previously provided

resonates with me, as does the use of purposeful questioning to elicit higher order thinking

skills as suggested by belcastro (2016) and Doree (2016). I also feel much more

knowledgeable about scientific inquiry and its classroom application to support student

understanding about both the scientific inquiry process and the NOS. I do not believe,

however, that scientific inquiry is the only form of inquiry applicable to the science

classroom. What I am left with at this point in time is the struggle to integrate the information

I have acquired into my burgeoning teaching practice.

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22

Scientific inquiry is more easily definable and thus more easily applicable than

general inquiry. As such I already have ideas for implementing scientific inquiry though I am

currently torn between two different approaches. One would be to start with a guided inquiry

process and, over time and in a fairly structured manner, have students progress towards a

true, open inquiry process. I think this might be an easier transition for older students with

limited or no exposure to inquiry practices thus far in their academic careers. My other idea is

to start students with a simple, minimally guided inquiry in which students themselves would

have to master a basic understanding of the inquiry process. Such simple inquiries would

gradually progress to more complex inquiries as students demonstrated greater mastery of the

inquiry process itself. This would potentially take more time, for both the students and

myself, but would, I think, ultimately lead to a deeper understanding of scientific inquiry.

Where I still find myself struggling with scientific inquiry, however, is connecting such

practices to prescribed content mastery. Regardless of the changes to the BC curriculum,

content mastery is still part of the process. One thing I am considering to address this tension

is to differentiate the practical lab components of a science course from the course content.

By focusing the lab component of the course on the acquisition of the science competencies

the pressure to teach or support course content is removed. Instead, when discussing course

content, the scientific inquiry skills learned can then be used to support the content learning.

For example, when learning about the physical structure of the earth we can challenge

students with the question, How do we know what the physical structure of the core is? and

expect answers relating to collecting data from which to make inferences as this conceptual
INQUIRING ABOUT INQUIRY
23

understanding would be part of scientific inquiry. We can then look at the type of data earth

scientists collected and the resulting inferences with students understanding the process of

inquiry - hypothesis, data collection, analysis, conclusion, ongoing testing and confirmation -

even if the scientific details about seismic wave behaviour are beyond them. Once students

are fluent with scientific inquiry practices it may be possible to then allow for open inquiry in

the subject area. It is also possible that such a process may occur over several years, with

students progressing in their understanding of scientific inquiry as they progress through high

school and only achieving truly open inquiry in their senior years. It remains to be seen if my

next practicum will afford me the opportunity to begin experimenting with this, or if it will

have to wait until I have my own classroom.

My ideas with regards to general inquiry and the content delivery part of the science

classroom are much less concrete. What I am focusing on for the moment is not a complete

overhaul of the teaching practices I have seen or experienced to some unknown-by-me ideal

of inquiry, but rather the inclusion of more purposeful practices that support and encourage

higher order thinking in my students. This can include such things as asking students how we

know something to be true, encouraging them to question what they are told or provide novel

alternatives, challenging them to apply their thinking or learning to novel situations, and

providing ample opportunity for both self-reflection and teacher feedback on both

assignments and processes. I have already begun to assess my lessons for questioning

opportunities, though I believe this skill will take a while to develop to the level of

proficiency I wish to have. I have also begun to assess my lessons for student driven inquiry
INQUIRING ABOUT INQUIRY
24

opportunities. For example, in my most recent practicum I taught students about algae,

mosses, and ferns and the evolutionary adaptations associated with the move to land for

plants. Reflecting on my experiences post-practicum I explored a variety of inquiry questions

on the same subject including why dont algae live on dry land?, why arent there any tall

moss plants?, and why do mosses and ferns exploit similar habitats? but quickly realized

these questions, imposed externally, didnt drive student inquiry the way I wanted. I either

need to improve my questioning ability to provide the guided inquiry structure I want or I

need to create an environment in which students generate the questions themselves. I

realized that the field experience I offered at the end of the unit, to go outside and apply their

learning to explain what they were seeing (ie. why was moss able to grow on top of rocks, but

ferns werent able to?), could actually be used at the beginning of the unit to provide students

an opportunity to generate their own questions by using field observations as a starting point.

Conclusion

As someone who engages in self-directed, internally motivated, inquiry based

learning I absolutely believe that harnessing students passions, interests, and curiosity to

motivate and engage students in their own learning and to empower students in their own

individual learning process is an incredibly powerful and effective learning strategy.

Figuring out how to take an internally initiated and driven process and apply it to a class of

diverse learners is something else entirely. While developing an understanding of inquiry in

such a setting has been a time consuming and sometimes frustrating process I at last feel I

understand enough to begin exploring how to incorporate inquiry into my own practice for
INQUIRING ABOUT INQUIRY
25

the benefit of my future students. The other thing this process has done is confirm for me

that good teaching encompasses a variety of techniques used by a variety of practitioners to

suit a variety of situations, all of which are in a constant state of flux. While inquiry, student

empowerment, and student ownership of learning remain a focus for me personally, I no

longer see their acquisition or mastery as necessary in order for me to become a good teacher.

I have thus given myself permission to explore, try, revise and practice these skills along with

all the others associated with entering the teaching profession.

INQUIRING ABOUT INQUIRY
26

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