Inquiry-Based Learning Activities in the Science Classroom
One of my biggest goals as a science educator continues to be encouraging inquiry and self-guided exploration amongst my students. This is no simple task and though each year I move a little closer to the vision I have in mind, I’m still not there yet. Even the best of the state-adopted curriculums struggle to package this style of instruction, and standards and district-mandated pacing guides make it difficult to open up the learning process in a way that truly allows for an inquiry-based approach to teaching science. Still, I see a great deal of benefit to this style of instruction, particularly in the middle school grades, and so, I continue to pursue it. Here is how I attempted to add inquiry instruction into my science class this previous year and some of my take-aways from the experience.
What are some of the characteristics of scientific inquiry in the classroom?
Most simply, inquiry-based learning activities in science are those that investigate questions. In other words, a question is posed, which is followed by research, experiments, observations, and data collection, until finally a solution to the question is found. Sounds like basic science, right? And really, it is. To be sure, any type of “question/investigation” process that happens in the science classroom, that allows students the opportunity to discover knowledge on their own, is a type of inquiry lesson. But there are different levels of inquiry. According to research presented by the California Academy of Science, inquiry can be sorted into 4 levels: confirmation, structured, guided, and open. The confirmation level is the most teacher centric. All aspects of the process (posing the question, designing the experimental procedure, and presenting the results) are provided by the teacher. The results are expected and explained by the teacher as well. The next level, structured, is much like the first, the biggest difference being that the students are led to the results, but they are allowed to interpret and make sense of them on their own. The question and procedure, however, continues to be dictated by the teacher.
I think its important to stress that both these levels are still types of inquiry instruction and, I would argue, they have their place in the middle school science classroom. Additionally, most commercial curriculum programs offer inquiry lessons in this manner. These 2 levels are, after all, structured and easiest in guiding students to the needed outcome for the sake of learning standards and objectives.
But it’s become my goal to move my inquiry-based instruction towards the last two levels of inquiry: guided and open. In a guided inquiry lesson, the teacher poses the question, but it is up to the students to design the experiment and collect and interpret the results. Though this 3rd level can be a little messy and perhaps cause a planning nightmare, I feel like this level provides a happy balance between structuring questions that are aligned with the standards, but also giving students the freedom to investigate and explore on their own. This is the level I think I’m striving for most often… or at least attempting to strive for.
The last level, open, is simultaneously the most ambitious, slightly scary, and most exciting in my mind. At this level, everything rests on the student. They pose the question (so it’s possible the question might land outside the purview of your content), they design the experiment, they explain the results. I did attempt one open inquiry lesson this year and it was everything I thought it would be- ambitious, scary, and exciting.
Why is inquiry-based instruction important?
Regardless of the level of inquiry, I feel strongly that inquiry of any nature is important in the science classroom. Afterall, inquiry is science! I truly believe there was a time in our middle science teaching past when what we were teaching wasn’t science but the history of science. I’m speaking from my own experience as a middle school science student when 90% of what we did in science was read about science. We weren’t taught to think critically or analyze data or interpret and communicate results. We memorized facts. We read about the great scientists of the past. It was interesting, but it wasn’t inquiry.
As human beings, most of us are curious by nature, particularly children. Fostering that natural sense of curiosity and wonder is the basis of inquiry science, which leads naturally into the teaching of critical thinking skills, collaboration, and creative problem-solving. Any level of inquiry-based science instruction develops in our students a way of thinking that goes far beyond the science classroom.
Making inquiry happen with whatever kind of curriculum you’ve got…
As I said earlier, many of the very best commercial curriculum products out there only offer confirmation or structured type inquiry lessons, at best. One of the ways I’ve found to work around this and make these programs a little more structured or guided inquiry is by flipping the lab (you can read my post about the flipped lab here). Many commercial programs (though, admittedly, not all… many are moving away from this) ask you and your students to read and complete worksheets or lessons before doing any lab work. The idea is to give students lots of background information so that when it comes time to see the science in action, they’ll have, in theory, a good sense of what’s going on. Instead, I start with the lab or activity and ask students to generate their own questions about what’s going on and what they think might be happening. If possible, I allow them the opportunity to do their own experimentation and test their own theories and ideas. By the time we get to the reading, they are often so intrigued, they are usually far more invested than they would have been otherwise.
Experimenting with an open-inquiry project…
This past year, I decided I wanted to try a truly open-inquiry project. This would mean letting the students direct all parts of the process, from question to results, which also meant possibly veering away from my core curriculum. I was teaching life science this past year but just as the school year was getting underway, something exciting happened- NASA completed its first remote helicopter flight mission on Mars. I’m a total space nerd so I was fascinated by this and took every opportunity to bring it up in class and talk about it (now, right here, it could be argued that my enthusiasm for this topic swayed the opinion of my students, so it wasn’t really an open, student-driven process after all, but that’s a debate for another time). From our small, passing period discussions my students and I started generating all sorts of questions about this phenomenon until it finally occurred to me- this would make a fantastic open-inquiry project. Because I taught life science, I knew I couldn’t dedicate a ton of time to this project, but I decided to give up a few Fridays, citing the engineering standards to anyone who asked. I’m also still not sure how much of it was truly “open” as I had to guide a lot of the process. We had certain limitations, like the fact that we aren’t NASA and we couldn’t field trip to Mars, so I had to navigate students to questions and experiments they could design within our limitations. Also, the prep work was a nightmare, as I thought it would be, because I was essentially preparing for at least 10 different experiments, all with different sets if materials, all at the same time. However, the student experience was phenomenal and worth the effort. Students were revising and reworking the process in real-time. Collecting data, collaborating, analyzing, and trying again. I don’t think we solved any great mysteries about flight on Mars, but I do think my students walked away with practical experience about data collection, critical thinking, and the inquiry process- which is all I really could have asked for anyway!
