You are seeing our new document Reader view. Click here to revert. Feel free to leave us feedback on this feature here.

Embed Doc
Copy Link
Readcast
Collections

CommentGo Back

Managing the Inquiry Classroom: Problems & Solutions

Anton E. Lawson1Anton E. Lawson, Ph.D., is a Professor of Biology at Arizona State University, Tempe,AZ 85287-1501;anton.lawson@asu.edu.Solving the ProblemsThe following tips are offered as ways of solving the problems.

1. Some students do not participate enough (serious problem).

There are three points to keep in mind while students are engaged in inquiries. First,make sure that working groups stay as small as possible given the available materialsand the nature of the tasks. Generally, students should work in teams of two becausegroups of three or more provide too much opportunity for non-participation. Second, de-cide ahead of time about how much time students will need to complete specific tasks(e.g. make initial explorations, design and conduct experiments, plot and analyze data)and inform them of these time guidelines before they start. When students know howlong they have to complete a task, they are better able to pace their work and stay ontask. Unfortunately, making effective time-management decisions requires a good dealof experience. Nevertheless, strive to master classroom timing as soon as possible.Generally, plan a variety of activities and plan more than you expect to complete toavoid the problem of students with nothing left to do while instructional time remains.Third, always monitor student progress by walking about the lab and watching andlistening. If a particular group is having difficulty getting started, stop and offer helpfulhints/suggestions/leading questions—but no directives as these limit thinking. Also, ifone or more groups finishes early, have additional questions or tasks “up your sleeve”so faster groups stay busy until slower ones finish. It also helps when students have aspecific to-be-graded assignment that they must complete and hand in.During class discussions, the best way to encourage participation is to use effectivequestioning techniques. Although specific questions will vary, at the core of all inquirieslie questions of the sort presented in Figure 1. As you can see, the questions are de-signed to provoke students to make careful observations, to raise causal questions, andto generate and test multiple hypotheses.

Using effective questioning techniques takes careful planning and lots of practice. Thecareful planning involves identifying in advance exactly what questions to raise, when toraise them, and just how to phrase them. At various points during the inquiries you willneed to raise appropriate well-phrased divergent questions (a divergent question is an“open-ended” question with several reasonable answers) and then pause briefly (four tofive seconds will do) to allow students time to think about possible answers (called Wait-Time I—see Rowe 1973). Convergent questions (those with only one correct answer) donot encourage much thinking and student participation because students either know ordo not know the correct answers. Once you ask a good divergent question, use ashuffled deck of cards, each with a student's name, to randomly call on a student to re-spond. Once the student responds, pause again (Wait-Time II). This signals that you aregiving the response careful consideration—even if you have heard similar responsesseveral times before or do not think it makes much sense. Following your moment ofcareful consideration, reply by saying something like, “That's an interesting idea” or“That is a possibility. I hadn't thought of that.” Make sure not to tell the student that s/heis “right” or “wrong” because doing so signals that you are hunting for one “right” an-swer, rather than trying to get students to think for themselves.If the student you call on is unable or unwilling to provide an answer, respond by sayingsomething like, “That's okay. I'll get back to you later when you have had more time tothink.” This strategy generally works well. Such students often come up with an answerin a short time and have their hands in the air begging to be called on. When they do,you should call on them and welcome their input. Next, use your cards to randomly se-lect another student to respond to the initial question or to comment on the first student'sidea, and so on. Continue this procedure (summarized in Figure 2) until several com-ments have been made. At this point you can allow students with additional ideas to of-fer them. This procedure typically results in several excellent student exchanges.

2. Some students do not know how to get the inquiry started (serious to moderateproblem)

. This problem may stem from unclear and/or incomplete introductory instruct-or remarks. Because students are not given “cookbook” instructions in how to inquire,they must be clear on the objectives before starting a particular task (e.g. explore thematerials to raise five descriptive questions and five causal questions; generate at leastthree hypotheses to answer causal question X; design and conduct tests of three of thehypotheses listed on the board; graph data and post the graph on the board). A failure

to make objectives clear often results in confusion, hence the need to spend excessivetime helping groups get started. Nevertheless, if after having made your best attempt atclear introductory remarks and asked students to begin, you still find that several groupsare struggling, you should stop the class and hold a discussion in which ideas from thefew groups that are making good progress can be shared and/or you can offer collectiveassistance. Also see points 5, 7 and 8 below.

3. Some students do not care and do not see the inquiry as relevant to their lives(serious to moderate problem).

The key here is to admit that many of the questionsraised by the inquiries (e.g. Why do cells appear to shrink in salt water? How does waterrise in vascular plants? How do characteristics vary within species?) are in fact not dir-ectly relevant to students' lives. But most, if not all, of the scientific concepts embeddedin answering these questions are indirectly relevant (e.g. the natural selection of bac-teria to some drugs has resulted in resistant bacterial stains that can cause death; pho-tosynthesis provides all our food as well as oxygen). Point out these indirect connectionswhen it is appropriate to do so—typically at the end of the inquiries.Interestingly and importantly, whether or not students see specific inquiries as relevanthas little to do with whether they “like” or “dislike” them. Instead, most students like in-quiries that raise challenging, but not overwhelming, questions. For example, most stu-dents like the candle-burning inquiry because it raises a very obvious, yet challengingquestion (i.e. Why does the water rise in the inverted cylinder?). The question is challen-ging because students soon discover that it cannot be answered with what initiallyseemed like the obvious answer (i.e. The flame consumed the oxygen and created apartial vacuum). Consequently, the candle-burning inquiry provides a very real intellec-tual mystery and students, just like professional scientists, are “turned on” by such intel-lectual mysteries. Thus, the key to making students willing and motivated participants isto make sure that they understand the question(s) raised, they generate a variety ofplausible answers, and have some ideas about how to test them. It also helps to fre-quently remind students that the thinking patterns employed in answering scientificquestions are also employed in answering questions in everyday life, as well as in theprofessional fields in which they may someday participate.

4. Some students do not listen (moderate problem).

The attention span of most stu-dents is surprisingly short. So plan your introductory remarks carefully. Make sure not towaste the short time that you do have. Your remarks should be brief and to the point. Do

of 00

Managing the Inquiry Classroom: Problems & Solutions

1,722 Reads

Info and Rating

Category:	School Work
Rating:	(1 Rating)
Upload Date:	02/08/2009
Copyright:	Attribution Non-commercial
Tags:	inquiry published research inquiry published research (fewer)