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Re: help needed- gifted education and inquiry science



Regarding research on effectiveness of inquiry science for gifted students:
FCI data in Modeling Instruction in High School Physics suggest that ALL
students, including gifted, gain in Modeling Instruction.

Modeling Instruction is guided, structured inquiry that focuses the course
on models, rather than topics, thus making the course coherent.

In high school classes that FULLY implemented Modeling Instruction,
students who had the LOWEST FCI PREtest scores achieved the HIGHEST
pretest-posttest gains. However, students who had the HIGHEST FCI PREtest
scores achieved the HIGHEST NORMALIZED gains.


Download our 15-page pdf document entitled "Findings of the Modeling
Workshop Project (1994 - 2000) at
<http://modeling.asu.edu> (click on 'research & evaluation').
Look at Figure 3 (on page 5). The following statement accompanies it.

"Students at similar pretest levels of conceptual knowledge, as measured by
the FCI, demonstrate different degrees of pretest - posttest gain,
depending on the degree of implementation of Modeling Instruction by their
physics teacher. Figure 3 presents three categories of students, based on
their pretest FCI performance (20% or below, 20-50%, and 50% or above).
Each category of student is broken down by the degree of Modeling Method
implementation by their teacher.
* Students with teachers who consistently use most or all components of
Modeling Instruction have the highest pretest-posttest gains.
* Students with the lowest pretest scores show the highest degree of gain
for the teachers in the highest Modeling implementation group."

Now, the above 2 sentences refer to posttest score minus pretest score.

Not shown on Figure 3 are the NORMALIZED GAINS. They are as follows, for
classes that FULLY implemented Modeling Instruction.

If pretest score was lower than 20%: <g> = .55 (N = 97 = # students)
If pretest score was from 20% to 50%: <g> = .64 (N = 239)
If pretest score was higher than 50%: <g> = .76 (N = 46)

On the other hand, Figure 3 shows that for traditional instruction, NO
students gained much, whether pretest-posttest or normalized. (You can
estimate <g> from the figure; our evaluator computed it. It's lower than .2
.)

cheers,
Jane Jackson

Jane Jackson, Co-Director, Modeling Instruction Program
Box 871504, Dept.of Physics & Astronomy,ASU,Tempe,AZ 85287
480-965-8438/fax:965-7331 <http://modeling.asu.edu>
"Walk a mile in another person's shoes."