Re: Inquiery based learning

[Glenn Knapp <kahuna@VCN.COM>]

At 12:57 PM 11/29/98 +0000, Dr. William Newbolt wrote:

>A week or two ago I got up with my daughter (5:30 in the

>morning) and while she got ready for school I watched a

>"Teacher to Teacher" program on Nick.  The show was hosted

>by Don Herbert (sp?) (Mr. Wizard).  It was on an "inquiry

>based learning" experience to learn stuff about wind.  It

>gave one teacher's experience with this particular

>curriculum.  The show was obviously designed to praise this

>form of learning science, but all I saw was a bunch of

>second graders wasting a couple of hours to learn that wind

>blows, that it is all caused by hot air rising, and that if

>you give a young kid a glass of water and a straw and tell

>him to blow on the water you get a mess.

>

>Inquiry based learning is designed, I believe, to let kids

>explore nature with a little guidance (actually very little

>if what I saw was correct) and come to their own conclusions

>(sort of).  Does anyone know more on this and are you as

>appalled as I am? If not, what are the genuine strengths of

>this system (no edubabble please)?  I am getting bright

>students in my college classes who have absolutely no

>science background what-so-ever.  Almost all of the finger

>pointed around here goes to the middle schools (the local

>bastions of esteem education), but I wonder if their

>elementary school science education is blown on hours

>wasting learning lite.

Dr. Newbolt,

Inquiry based learning is only the latest and greatest science teaching fads to sweep the nation.  If you want to be an up-to-date, cutting edge science teacher, why, then you had better climb on board.

In addition to being a full time teacher of physics, I am also the "Secondary Science Facilitator" for our district and am semi-responsible for the 7 - 12 science curriculum in the district.  The junior high schools have given themselves over to learning by inquiry, with one or two (mostly old and conservative) teachers refusing to get on board.  The rest are into this thing.

The students all work in groups.  Each group moves about the science room from station to station.  Each station has a different task.  They might do an experiment measuring the dissolved carbon dioxide/oxygen concentration in a beaker of water that has a plant exposed to artificial light, the next station may find them making a video of a leaf using a video microscope, the next station will have them making leaf prints on tee shirts with fabric paint, and so on.  The grades are based on the student's individual journal and the products that are put together by the team.  When I go to the schools and observe, the students are generally busy, filling out their journals and doing whatever else the teacher wants them to do.  The question is, of course, are they learning anything?

We've had this going on long enough now that some of the graduates have managed to make it to the high school and become a member of my physics class.  They have, without my asking, shared with me their "take" on their junior high experience.  I will try to summarize the input they have given me.  I will also provide my take on their preparation  for high school level chemistry and physics.

The good students found the junior high experience to be boring and unchallenging.  All the teachers wanted, they would tell me, was a nicely written journal filled with drawings.  They did not feel that they had learned anything and resented the teacher not actually "teaching" them the subject.  Another bit of resentment was that the cooperative groups (usually four students) were anything but cooperative.  Many students felt like they had done all the work (or it would not have been done) and then their "partners" got to share the credit having done little or no work. 

The middle of the road students were not really engaged either.  They felt lost.  Activities that were supposed to captivate their interest and inspire them to want to learn more were actually ordeals where they would have to try and make up some explanation of what happened that would satisfy the teacher.  The activities did not reinforce learning, but did reinforce their frustration.  "I don't know why it did that, but the teacher expected me to come up with something, so I would just write down a bunch of stuff." 

A few of the teachers do make it work - marvelous things take place in their rooms - but I suspect that these teachers would get equally good results no matter what teaching strategy they used.  But most of the teachers produce students who are less motivated than I would like to see.

We have students who have come through the junior high program during the last two years and I have seen a fall off of student performance at the beginning of the year.  Their ability to use math is deficient and they have trouble solving problems.  Even more disturbing is a slight lessoning of curiosity and excitement in learning about how things really work.  Hard to absolutely pin it on the junior high inquiry approach, but that's what I think.

Glenn

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