.Increased consensus around the meaning of “inquiry.” As
already discussed, our results show little evidence of student directed
inquiry, even in articles that explicitly put forward labs
as inquiry based. We found that “inquiry” was interpreted broadly
and described with little detail. This may be a lack of consistency
in writing or in actual classroom implementation. If the lack is the
result of authors not describing practices that are, in fact, already
happening in the classroom, the articles risk perpetuating confusion
around the meaning of inquiry (Eastwell & MacKenzie, 2009).
However, if the lack reflects labs in which student-directed inquiry
is not happening, this means that many classrooms are not engaging
students in ways that expert teachers, researchers, and scientists
hope to foster (Enyedy & Goldberg, 2004). As “practices” shift to
the forefront with implementation of the NGSS, productive collaboration
depends on our ability to be precise in how we describe practices,
in how we implement instruction around practices, and in
how we provide rigorous evidence of what inquiry really looks like
in the classroom