Orchestrating Inquiry Learning

Karen Littleton,Eileen Scanlon,Mike Sharples

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136486340
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Bildung
• Categoria: Bildung Allgemein

There is currently a rapidly growing interest in inquiry learning and an emerging consensus among researchers that, particularly when supported by technology, it can be a significant vehicle for developing higher order thinking skills. Inquiry learning methods also offer learners meaningful and productive approaches to the development of their knowledge of the world, yet such methods can present significant challenges for teachers and students.

Orchestrating Inquiry Learning

addresses the key challenge of how to resource and support processes of inquiry learning within and beyond the classroom. It argues that technological support, when coupled with appropriate design of activities and management of the learning environment, can enable inquiry learning experiences that are engaging, authentic and personally relevant.

This edited collection of carefully integrated chapters brings together, for the first time; work on inquiry learning and orchestration of learning. Drawing upon a broad range of theoretical perspectives, this book examines:

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• Orchestration of inquiry learning and instruction

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• Trajectories of inquiry learning

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• Designing for inquiry learning

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• Scripting personal inquiry

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• Collaborative and collective inquiry learning

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• Assessment of inquiry learning

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• Inquiry learning in formal and semi-formal educational contexts

Orchestrating Inquiry Learning is essential reading for all those concerned with understanding and promoting effective inquiry learning. The book is aimed at an international audience of researchers, post-graduate students, and advanced undergraduates in education, educational technology and psychology. It will also be of interest to educational practitioners and policy makers, including teachers, educational advisors, teacher-students and their trainers.

Chapter 1

Inquiry Learning Reconsidered: Contexts, Representations and Challenges

Eileen Scanlon, Stamatina Anastopoulou and Lucinda Kerawalla

Introduction

Inquiry learning is an educational approach with a long intellectual pedigree (see e.g. Dewey 1938; Bruner 1996). This chapter consists of a review of the literature on inquiry learning particularly related to inquiry learning in science subjects, exploring how this work has informed the design of inquiry learning experiences, and how inquiry-based learning supported by technology can afford learners at school a meaningful and productive approach to the development of their knowledge of the world.

The chapter considers approaches to inquiry learning, personalisation and the nature and effectiveness of different representations of the inquiry learning process. These issues are selected for consideration here because of our belief in the importance of personalisation of inquiries to make them meaningful to learners, and the importance of the representation of the processes of inquiry to overcome some of the difficulties which have been experienced in its implementation. The chapter also highlights the implications of this work for the teaching of inquiry – drawing on evidence to suggest that, when supported appropriately, learning by inquiry is a potentially effective strategy (see e.g. Chinn and Malhotra 2002).

Support for inquiry learning can be orchestrated using technological resources coupled with the appropriate design of activities and the learning environment (see e.g. Anastopoulou 2004). Orchestration is the metaphor we are using to describe the interplay between teacher, pupil, technology and activity. The chapter explores the variety of ways in which such support has been instantiated in practical terms, with the requirements for supporting personal inquiry being given particular consideration.

Approaches to Inquiry Learning

The consideration and reconsideration of the benefits of inquiry learning is a contemporary issue. We have used a working definition of inquiry-based learning as follows: ‘inquiry-based learning involves learners asking questions about the natural or material world, collecting data to answer those questions, making discoveries and testing those discoveries rigorously’ (de Jong 2006a p.532). The National Science Foundation (2008) defines inquiry as ‘an approach to learning that involves a process of exploring the natural or material world, and that leads to asking questions, making discoveries, and rigorously testing those discoveries in the search for new understanding’ (p. 20). There have been many empirical research studies in this field. For example, Edelson et al. (1999) has conducted a programme of research on the use of scientific visualisation technologies to support inquiry-based learning in the geosciences. Their aim was to help students develop an integrated understanding of science including a knowledge of scientific concepts, an understanding of scientific tools and media and inquiry skills. This understanding could be said to be similar to that which scientists have. Keselman (2003) describes inquiry learning as ‘an educational activity in which students are placed in the position of scientists gathering knowledge about the world’ (p. 898). This is not a straightforward position to put students in, as many commentators have noted. Further discussion of inquiry learning can be found in Scanlon et al., (in press).

A significant shift in the reconsideration of science curricula in the post-war years was the move to inquiry-based learning and laboratorybased experiences. Duschl and Grandy (2008) discuss the National Science Foundation (NSF)-sponsored curriculum developments of the 60s and 70s in the US, which had the aim of ‘downgrading the role of the textbook in science teaching and elevate the role of investigative and laboratory experiences in science classrooms’. According to Joe Schwab (1962), first Director of Biological Sciences Curriculum Strategy, science education should be designed so that learning is ‘enquiry into enquiry’. Reviewing the work of the last 50 years in the UK and US, Grandy and Duschl (2007) report on an NSF sponsored conference to reconsider the character and role of inquiry in school science which concluded that there was a need to develop an expanded notion of the scientific method, due to the importance of the role of models in the inquiry process.

These important insights raise issues to consider in a discussion of inquiry learning. For example, we might wonder what it is that children need to do to learn inquiry processes, what is the appropriate role of models in learning, what kind of models are necessary for us to consider and how best to develop a balance in learning science between learning inquiry skills and learning domain knowledge.

Recently too, there has been a fresh consideration of inquiry learning in other science-related activities. Bradley-Smith (2005) argues that the development of inquiry skills in Geography can enable students to become active global citizens by reflecting upon their own behaviours and giving them confidence to take action. In relation to Geography fieldwork, Ofsted (2008) argues that inquiry-based fieldwork ‘sharpens and deepens learners’ understanding of Geography and the progressive development of geographical skills, both in situ and in the lessons in school related to it’ (p.34).

Anderson (2002) refers to the difficulty of making sense of the large number of empirical studies on inquiry learning, and of the number of metaanalyses conducted, due to the variety of conceptions of inquiry teaching used, but concludes that there is ‘a pattern of general but not unequivocal support for inquiry teaching’ (p.6). He describes the importance of preparing teachers for inquiry teaching, although it is less clear how to do so. This is in line with the view that learning by inquiry is a potentially effective strategy when supported appropriately (e.g. Chinn and Malhotra 2002; White and Frederiksen 1998). In addition to teacher preparation, other areas requiring support have also been identified. Recent work suggests that learners can find difficulties in applying the processes of hypothesis forming, experimentation and dealing with evidence and interpreting models (e.g. de Jong 2006a and b; Manlove et al. 2006). Learners often lack skills in regulating their own learning – for example, in planning, monitoring and effectively evaluating what they have learnt. In addition, Sandoval and Reiser (2004/2) report on difficulties that learners have in reconciling their ideas about the nature of science and those they need to use in inquiry learning settings. However, de Jong et al. (2006) indicate the specific difficulties that children have in engaging with inquiry learning, in addition to general meta-cognitive problems in failing to regulate their behaviour or plan effectively. In an extensive meta-review of studies on discovery learning with simulations, de Jong and van Joolingen (1998) isolate a range of difficulties that have been reported in other studies. This implies that children will need specific support in:

• designing appropriate experiments (e.g. what variables to chose, how many variables to change, how to state and test hypotheses) (de Jong and van Joolingen 1998)
• implementation of experiments (e.g. making predictions, avoiding being fixated with achieving particular results rather than testing hypotheses) (van Joolingen et al. 2005)
• interpreting results (e.g. children can misinterpret data and representations) (de Jong and Van Joolingen 1998; White and Frederiksen 2005).

Edelson et al. (1999) point out that discovery learning is not the only form of inquiry learning. They describe how a number of forms of inquiry learning have been explored including: controlled experimentation, modelling, synthesis of primary sources and exploration of quantitative data, each of which require the development of a particular set of skills. They also note that different subject domains in science have their own specific skills e.g. controlled experimentation in chemistry or psychology. Hodson (1998) argues also that it is important that students are able to engage in a wide variety of types of inquiry to improve their understanding of the nature of science. He also believes it is important that: ‘worthwhile scientific activities can be conducted outdoors in the school grounds field centres, forests beaches and mountains and in museums zoos and botanic gardens’ (p. 148). In these settings, students have the opportunity to work alongside scientists and to take part in community and environmental work (see chapters by Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, Viilo and Hakkarainen and Hickey and Filsecker (this volume)).

Grandy and Duschl (2007) refer to a particular challenge for learners in obtaining a perspective on scientific inquiry is how to contend with the transition from sense–perception-based science in early grade levels to theory-driven based science at later grade levels. They also note that scientists’ contemporary experience of science is that it is, in practice, decreasingly about experiments and increasingly about data and data modelling. They also draw attention to the importance of promoting scientific discourse practices, a theme which is also elaborated on by Millar (2003) as of central importance as it requires the teacher to see him/herself less as a transmitter of information, reliant on a closed authoritative dialogue, and more as a facilitator of opportunities which enable discursive consideration and exploration by students of the epistemic and cognitive dimensions of science (p.3).

This is indeed a contentious statement. Sharples (2011) writes ‘Many people would argue that teachers should not simply, or even largely, facilitate scientific discourse amongst students, but that they need also to communicate established scientific knowledge in a way that enables students to distinguish between scientific principles (e.g. Newton’s Laws), scientific consensus (e.g. global warming, species evolution) and current scientific debate (e.g. existence of life on other planets). It’s especially important to make these distinctions if children are to join debates in contemporary society’.

Challenges in Inquiry Learning

We have seen that there is a need to support the development of inquiry skills which can influence science teaching and learning practices so that students develop the knowledge and understanding they need to engage, as informed citizens, with science-based issues. There is a need for students to be supported to know where they are in an inquiry, and to follow a pattern of reflection on their data (e.g. selecting the useful data from the data collected, and constructing and interpreting representations, Chinn and Malhotra 2002; Kuhn and Pease 2008). There is a need for support in the selection of appropriate data to collect, and in selecting which contextual factors to consider during data collection. Researchers have studied in detail the particular challenges that inquiry learning poses with the following results.

Learners can find difficulties in applying the processes of hypothesis forming, experimentation, dealing with evidence and interpreting models (e.g. de Jong 2006; Manlove et al. 2006). Learners often lack skills in regulating their own learning – for example, in planning, monitoring and effectively evaluating what they have learnt. Thus, there is a need to support learners in managing inquiry learning. Most scientific enquiries, whether professional or by students, are collaborative (Driver et al. 2000), so learners also need support for effective collaboration (see e.g. Scardamalia 2002; Linn and Slotta 2006). Sandoval et al. (2002) suggest that many teachers, as well as their students, see science as being the discovery and collection of facts about the world, rather than as being theories that have been created by people. This is not to say that all theories are contested by the scientific community. The role of the scientific process of replication and hypothesis testing in validating theories is important here too. However it can be that experiments are seen to create answers rather than to test ideas. Often, children’s participation in an activity is taken as sufficient for learning to take place, and teachers may not understand why children ‘do not understand’ by the end of it. Despite the considerable advances made by the conceptual change research traditions (see e.g. Driver et al. 2000; Zimmermann 2007), students’ views are often still not seen as something to work from – they are either right or wrong, and little effort is made to understand why they think what they do. In these circumstances it is not surprising that teachers find inquiry teaching challenging. Sandoval et al. (2002) argue that: ‘teachers’ discourse needs to shift from a focus on descriptions of or implications about an activity, to an explicit analysis of the justifications behind particular activities and the evidence available for understanding them’ (p.12).

In a study of 50 Key Stage 2 science lessons in UK primary schools (involving children aged 8–11 years old), Newton and Newton (2000) found that science teachers’ discourse consists mainly of stating facts or asking children questions about descriptions and facts, with very little attention being paid to eliciting causal understanding, i.e. the reasons behind the facts. This is supported by Watson, Swain and Robbie (2004), whose study of science teaching in two Year 8 (12–13 years) science classes revealed that both the teachers and the children treated scientific inquiry as a set of routinized procedures to be completed in order to write a report. Consequently, children were unable to describe the aims of their inquiry, and unable to explain their findings. The lessons were not seen as an opportunity for discussion and decision-making. The authors suggested that the teachers lacked the pedagogical skills to stimulate and manage discussion. There is now developing a body of work that aims to develop such pedagogical skills (see, for example, Dawes et al. 2004).

Furtak (2005) illustrates that a significant challenge to teachers in inquiry learning environments is their ability to know how to deflect direct requests for domain knowledge from their pupils. She suggests that scientific inquiry is difficult to teach due to lack of lesson time, teachers’ weak understanding of the nature of science, inappropriate curricula, and lack of pedagogical skills (Roehrig 2004; Tobin, Tippins, and Gallard 1994; Welch, Klopfer, Aikenhead, and Robinson 1981). Furtak points out also that the answers to most of the children’s’ inquiries are already known (i.e. the teacher knows the outcomes, and most children know that the teacher knows). She describes the classroom inquiry process in terms of ‘guided scientific inquiry teaching’, as opposed to the genuine open-ended scientific inquiry carried out by professional scientists. She argues that this can give rise to the ‘teacher’s dilemma’, identified by Edwards and Mercer (1987), and described as the teacher ‘hav[ing] to inculcate knowledge while apparently eliciting it’ (p. 126). Furtak carried out a study with three teachers who videoed their own lessons over several weeks. She interviewed the teachers and analysed the video footage. She found that there were several ways in which ...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Editorial introduction: Orchestrating inquiry learning
• 1. Inquiry learning reconsidered: contexts, representations and challenges
• 2. Trajectories of inquiry learning
• 3. Orchestrating inquiry instruction using the knowledge integration framework
• 4. Designing orchestration for inquiry learning
• 5. Scripting personal inquiry
• 6. Learning and technological designs for mobile science inquiry collaboratories
• 7. Infrastructures for technology-supported collective inquiry learning in science
• 8. Participatory learning assessment for organising inquiry in educational videogames and beyond
• 9. Orchestration of assessment: assessing emerging learning objects
• 10. Inquiry learning in semi-formal contexts
• Index