Effective Use of Inquiry in the Elementray Science Classroom – Implications for Teacher Directed Professional Development

Abstract

Inquiry-based teaching and learning is a replication of authentic scientific investigation and a means of channeling natural human curiosity towards specified learning outcomes. Though this approach has long been touted as an effective pedagogy, its application by elementary classroom teachers has been problematic even though much time and money has been spent on professional development in this area.

If students are to reach science proficiency, elementary science instruction must engage students in inquiry and their inquiry must reflect the knowledge building practices of the scientific community recently delineated in the National Research Council’s report, Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8, (NRC, 2007).

Two case studies were used as the research strategy to investigate effective professional learning experiences for teachers and the concomitant development of scientific proficiency in children. Data collected from both cases were examined using grounded theory analysis. Case studies were selected as the method for conducting this empirical inquiry as a means to investigate a series of events focused on the use of inquiry in relation to two different classroom contexts.

Both case studies used a newly developed instrument, the Classroom Observation Inventory, to collect data regarding teachers’ use of the 5E model of inquiry-based teaching. The data indicates an overall pattern - teachers continually cycle through the stages of engage/elicit, explore, and explain. There were very few teachers’ lessons that ventured into the stages of expand/elaborate or evaluate. These indicators support the belief that observed inquiry practices are supportive of the development of foundational skills of inquiry only and do not include those higher level inquiry skills necessary to support the knowledge building practices included in the science proficiency indicators purported by the NRC.

It is the recommendation of this study, that the Classroom Observation Inventory be used as a collaborative data collection tool and discussion facilitator to support teachers in making informed instructional decisions that will enhance classroom practices to support students in reaching full science proficiency.  In addition to the Classroom Observation Inventory, it is recommended that a complimentary tool be used to refine lesson design to support the strengths and limitations noted on the inventory. The 5E Unit Plan Outline is a tool that is consistent with the expectations of inquiry-based teaching afforded by the Inventory and supports designing instruction that facilitates science proficiency.  Using these tools, teachers can examine their own capacity to design instructional learning progressions that encourage a more student centered theory building approach; one that embraces a question focus rather than an answer focus. These recommendations could provide the means by which elementary science teachers could shift their roles as managers of hands on activities to facilitators of students’ scientific reasoning.