in an effort to answer their questions of interest. Pre-college students, and the general
public for that matter, believe in a distorted view of SI that has resulted from schooling, the
media, and the format of most scientific reports. This distorted view is called ‘The Scientific
Method’. That is, a fixed set and sequence of steps that all scientists follow when
attempting to answer scientific questions. A more critical description would characterize
‘The Method’ as an algorithm that students are expected to memorize, recite, and follow as
a recipe for success. The visions of reform, however, are quick to point out that there is no
single fixed set or sequence of steps that all scientific investigations follow. The contemporary
view of SI advocated is that the questions guide the approach and the
approaches vary widely within and across scientific disciplines and fields.
At a general level, SI can be seen to take several forms (i.e., descriptive, correlational,
and experimental). Descriptive research is the form of research that often characterizes the
beginning of a line of research. This is the type of research that derives the variables and
factors important to a particular situation of interest. Whether descriptive research gives
rise to correlational approaches depends upon the field and topic. For example, much of the
research in anatomy and taxonomy are descriptive in nature and do not necessarily progress
to experimental or correlational types of research. The purpose of research in these
areas is very often simply to describe. On the other hand, there are numerous examples in
the history of anatomical research that have led to more than description. The initial
research concerning the cardiovascular system by William Harvey was descriptive in
nature. However, once the anatomy of blood vessels had been described, questions arose
concerning the circulation of blood through the vessels. Such questions led to research that
correlated anatomical structures with blood flow and experiments based on models of the
cardiovascular system. To briefly distinguish correlational from experimental research,
the former explicates relationships among variables identified in descriptive research and
the latter involves a planned intervention and manipulation of variables related in correlational
research in an attempt to derive causal relationships. In some cases, lines of
research can been seen to progress from descriptive to correlational to experimental, while
in other cases (e.g., descriptive astronomy) such a progression is not necessarily relevant.
The perception that a single scientific method exists owes much to the status of classical
experimental design. Experimental designs very often conform to what is presented as ‘The
Scientific Method’ and the examples of scientific investigations presented in science
textbooks most often are experimental in nature. The problem, of course, is not that
investigations consistent with ‘‘the scientific method’’ do not exist. The problem is that
experimental research is not representative of scientific investigations as a whole. Consequently,
a very narrow and distorted view of SI is promoted in our K-12 students.
Scientific inquiry has always been ambiguous in its presentation within science education
reforms. In particular, inquiry is perceived in three different ways. It can be viewed
as a set of skills to be learned by students and combined in the performance of a scientific
investigation. It can also be viewed as a cognitive outcome that students are to achieve. In
particular, the current visions of reform are very clear (at least in written words) in
distinguishing between the performance of inquiry (i.e., what students will be able to do)
and what students know about inquiry (i.e., what students should know). For example, it is
one thing to have students set up a control group for an experiment, while it is another to
expect students to understand the logical necessity for a control within an experimental
design. Unfortunately, the subtle difference in wording noted in the reform documents (i.e.,
‘‘know’’ versus ‘‘do’’) is often missed by everyone except the most careful reader. The
third use of ‘‘inquiry’’ in reform documents relates strictly to pedagogy and further
muddies the water. In particular, current wisdom advocates that students best learn science
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through an inquiry-oriented teaching approach. It is believed that students will best learn
scientific concepts by doing science. In this sense, ‘‘scientific inquiry’’ is viewed as a
teaching approach used to communicate scientific knowledge to students (or allow students
to construct their own knowledge) as opposed to an educational outcome that students are
expected to learn about and learn how to do. Indeed, it is the pedagogical sense of inquiry
that it is unwittingly communicated to most teachers by science education reform documents,
with the two former senses lost in the shuffle. Just to reiterate, we definitely do not
want to communicate, through our separate discussions, that NOS and SI are discrete
aspects of science. Clearly they overlap and intimately interact in the development and
ontological status of scientific knowledge.