What We Know

Scientific inquiry is an essential part of both the National Research Council’s National Science Education Standards (1996) and the Ohio Science Academic Content Standards (2002). Teaching and learning through inquiry promotes deep understanding of science concepts, active communication and high engagement in learning science. As students participate in the process of inquiry and use scientific reasoning, they incorporate new science concepts into their schemas and form a positive attitude toward science. For science teachers, incorporating inquiry-based teaching strategies into classroom practices is a necessity.

What is scientific inquiry in school science?

Scientific inquiry is a multifaceted activity that involves making observations, posing questions, examining sources of information, planning investigations, reviewing others' data, using tools to gather and analyze data, proposing explanations and predictions, and communicating the results of investigations (National Research Council, 2000). In short, inquiry is the process that scientists use to make empirical observations and develop evidence-based explanations of the natural world. A role of science teachers is to help students model this process in the classroom (National Research Council, 2000). The National Research Council describes five key features of inquiry-based instruction in science:

• Learners are engaged by scientifically oriented questions.

• Learners give priority to evidence, which allows them to develop and evaluate explanations that address scientifically oriented questions.

• Learners formulate explanations from evidence to address scientifically oriented questions.

• Learners evaluate their explanations in light of alternative explanations, particularly those reflecting scientific understanding.

• Learners communicate and justify their proposed explanations.

Science lessons may include any number of these features and may vary in the degree to which students are self-directed. Teacher-guided scientific inquiry engages students in a subset of these features. As teachers move a classroom toward full inquiry, students learn how to conduct science and learn about the nature of science.

How do students benefit from scientific inquiry?

Inquiry learning in science provides students opportunities to construct meaning from their experiences and integrate them with prior knowledge (Tobin & Tippins, 1993). The practices of inquiry go hand-in-hand with a constructivist view of student learning. This view, according to Tobin and Tippins, suggests that learning is a process of making sense of experience in terms of what the learner already knows. Collins (2002) describes essential features of constructivist learning:

• Learning is active.

• Learning is the interaction of ideas and processes.

• New knowledge is built on prior knowledge.

• Learning is enhanced when situated in contexts that students find familiar and meaningful.

• Complex problems that have multiple solutions enhance learning.

• Learning is augmented when students engage in discussions of the ideas and processes involved.

Inquiry immerses students in conducting scientific investigation in familiar and meaningful contexts. The social nature of scientific inquiry gives students opportunities to engage in discussions with teachers and classmates about the scientific concepts they are beginning to understand and the scientific processes they are using to develop those understandings. Because the nature of scientific inquiry supports the constructivist model of learning, its use in the science classroom has benefits for students. (For more information on teaching through inquiry with young children, see Science in the Early Grades.)

Inquiry teaching and learning has been shown to improve learning outcomes in the science classroom. Cruickshank and Olander (2002) found that inquiry instruction enhanced writing and thinking abilities of secondary physical science students. Although students using the scientific inquiry approach demonstrated higher anxiety about their classroom projects than their peers in a traditional laboratory, they also performed better. Berg, Bergendahl, Lundberg and Tibell (2003) found that college chemistry students also benefit from an inquiry approach to the laboratory. Students engaged in scientific inquiry were better able to describe an experiment they had conducted and envision modifications they could make to the experimental design than were their peers in an expository class. This group of students also asked more reflective questions than their peers in the expository class. (For more information on student learning in physical sciences, see Physical Sciences.)

Students involved in scientific inquiry tend to have better attitudes about science. When students construct their own knowledge and understand the relevance of science to their lives and coursework, attitudes toward science improve (Novak, 1988). In studies that contrast the attitudes of science students in inquiry classrooms to those in more traditional expository classrooms, the students engaged in active scientific inquiry express greater satisfaction with the classroom experience and more positive feelings about learning science (Cruickshank & Olander; Berg et al.).

How can teachers incorporate scientific inquiry into the curriculum?

Vasquez (1998) and Llewellyn (2002) advocate that teachers consider what students already know and what interests them when planning learning experiences. Students will take more ownership of their learning if allowed to investigate according to their own interests. The challenge for teachers is to recognize students’ starting points and to provide experiences that can support them as they become more independent learners. Scaffolding is the structure provided by teachers that supports students as they attempt to accomplish tasks and achieve learning objectives they would be otherwise unable to perform alone. Teachers can use scaffolding to familiarize students with the processes of scientific inquiry so that students may gradually take more responsibility for conducting inquiry with less teacher guidance. 

When inquiry is first introduced to the classroom, teachers bear the responsibility for guiding students through their frustrations and for keeping students engaged and interested. As students progress through scaffolded experiences, they will begin taking significant responsibility for their own learning (Flick, 2000). Research has shown that instruction that helps facilitate scaffolding includes use of a learning cycle approach, evidence mapping and formative assessment (Anderson, 2002).

A learning cycle pedagogy can provide a scaffold for student learning, encouraging students to question what they already know and reconcile any differences they encounter between their schemas and empirical observations (Minstrell & Stimpson, 1992). This self-questioning, which is of central importance to inquiry, may prove difficult for students. Typically, students seek evidence that supports what they already believe to be true and, when faced with results that conflict with their predictions, tend to discredit sources of incompatible information. A learning cycle format that includes student-generated research ideas, questions, experimental design, data analysis and conclusion can help students reconcile differences and reform their understandings of concepts (Gabel, 2002). Teachers should ideally guide students through the process to help students reconcile data or observations that conflict with their personal explanations. In science classrooms, such teaching and learning is often facilitated through cooperative learning groups with peer discussion so that students are able to monitor their own learning and problem-solving through interactions with others (Gabel).

Evidence mapping may also facilitate reconciliation of observations that conflict with students' understandings (Toth, Suthers & Lesgold, 2002). When students map their understandings of concepts and how they are related to one another, it may enable them to identify how and why observations conflict with previously held assumptions. This process is facilitated when the teacher promotes reflective self-assessment, allowing students the opportunity to develop their metacognitive skills. As students begin to think about their thinking, they may become more comfortable with testing and evaluating their assumptions, facilitating the process of inquiry and sharing responsibility for their learning. (For more information on assessment, see Classroom Assessment in Science Education.)

In making the decision of how much guidance to provide students in a scientific inquiry activity, teachers should consider if they want students to learn particular concepts and/or acquire abilities to engage in inquiry (National Research Council, 2000). When students are focused on achieving a desired outcome such as designing a product, they will tend to make more correct and valid inferences about variables in their study. A problem-solving exercise may provide an entry point that is familiar to students, asking them to focus on providing a practical solution to a scientific or technological problem. However, if only this approach is used, students will tend to overlook the possibility that undesirable outcomes also produce useful information (Schauble, Klopfer & Raghavan, 1991). In contrast, when students are focused on understanding the relationships among variables in a research project, they tend to expend more effort exploring variables and the causal relationships between them (Schauble et al.). Ideally, both approaches will be used in a classroom. A problem-solving exercise may help familiarize students with the variables. Exploratory research may help students build understanding of the relationships among variables and outcomes.