What an Inquiry Lesson is NOT

Some Initial Thoughts

(Under development - last updated 1/31/2007)

~ Carl J. Wenning ~

In this course you are asked to prepare and present two 50-minute, stand-alone inquiry lessons. For the purposes of this course, an inquiry lesson is defined by the instructor (in his paper Levels of inquiry: Hierarchies of pedagogical practices and inquiry processes. Journal of Physics Teacher Education Online, 2(3), February 2005) as follows:

“In the inquiry lesson, the emphasis subtly shifts to a more complex form of scientific experimentation. The pedagogy is one in which the activity is based upon the teacher remaining in charge by providing guiding, indeed leading, questions. Guidance is given more indirectly using appropriate questioning strategies. The teacher places increasing emphasis on helping students to formulating their own experimental approaches, identifying and controlling variables, and defining the system. The teacher now speaks about scientific process explicitly by providing an ongoing commentary about the nature of inquiry. The teacher models fundamental intellectual processes and explains the fundamental understandings of scientific inquiry while the students learn by observing and listening, and responding to questions. This is in effect scientific inquiry using a vicarious approach with the teacher using a “think aloud” protocol. This approach will more fully help students understand the nature of inquiry processes. This form of inquiry lesson is essential to bridging the gap between interactive demonstration and laboratory experiences. This is so because it is unreasonable to assume that students can use more sophisticated experimental approaches before they are familiar with them. For instance, students must be able to distinguish between independent, dependent, controlled, and extraneous variables before they can develop a meaningful controlled scientific experiment.” (p. 5-6)

While this definition is apt, it is not presented in a vacuum. In the article from which the inquiry lesson is abstracted, it is contrasted with discovery learning and interactive demonstrations on one end of a continuous spectrum of inquiry types, and labs and hypothetical inquiry on the other end of the spectrum. When such a definition has “bookends,” it is relatively easy to distinguish an inquiry-oriented lesson from other things in the continuum. However, when the definition of the inquiry lesson stands alone, it is less clear of what an inquiry lesson consists. In such a case a number of non-examples can be more helpful in understanding the nature of an inquiry lesson than a good definition. Consider what an inquiry lesson is not. A stand-alone inquiry-oriented lesson is NOT a(n):

• lab exercise. Labs place the responsibility for conducting a learning activity in the hands of a student to a more significant extent, and the intellectual processes required of a student are somewhat more sophisticated.

• discovery lesson or interactive demonstration. These, too, are different from an inquiry lesson in the degree of student autonomy and intellectual sophistication. Reference to definition of these terms, as well as labs, can help distinguish.

• lecture with lots of questions interspersed. A lecture differs from an inquiry lesson to the extent that is teacher-centered rather than student-centered instruction. In a lecture the instructor is focused on communicating information to students rather than helping them to construct it on the basis of observation or experimentation and logic. If questions are asked by a lecturer, they are typically used to determine if the lecturer has gotten the content across to the students. Inquiry lessons differ to the point that they are largely driven by an effort to answer one or two focusing questions. The role of the question in an inquiry lesson is to get students to think critically about information.

• worksheet or other application of knowledge. Merely having students apply what they already know is not inquiry. Inquiry is focused on the pursuit of knowledge – constructed as a result of observation and/or experimentation. Worksheets and many lecture demonstrations seek to have students employ the knowledge they already possess, rather than focusing on developing new concepts or understandings.

• recitation session. Problem solving sessions – working out the problems at the end of a book chapter – is not a form of inquiry. It’s another form of application of knowledge.

Inquiry can take many forms such as research, problem-based learning, panel discussions, etc. However, these forms of not generally appropriate to the for of self-contained, 50-minute inquiry lesson required in this course.