When antibiotics were invented, the cure became available. If scientists had been working with a different principle of inquiry, they might have noticed that most victims of tuberculosis were poor, and lived in crowded conditions, and had poor diets. If the focus of science at the time had been determined to be these factors. Tuberculosis in England was in decline before the invention of antibiotics; this was because there were less poor people in England, and living conditions were better.
If you are teacher who has inquiry as a philosophy, you will value the different perspectives that your students bring to a question. You might set out a topic worthy of exploration, but you will leave much else up to your students. You can even leave the topic open if you encourage your students to do independent research projects beyond the curricular material being covered in class.
Inquiry: The Teaching Method
Inquiry as a teaching method was invented by social studies teachers. Students were given data from different countries, and asked to analyze the data to make generalizations and predictions about the people of the countries. Inquiry is a term used broadly to refer to everything from pseudo-experiments where the teacher has the students reify already taught concepts to one in which students have virtually total control.
The parts of a lesson should match the different components of a “laboratory report”. Usually, the first part written (or discussed in class) is the problem or question. Often, the problem or question is such that a hypothesis can be written. ENSURE THAT YOUR STUDENTS JUSTIFY THEIR HYPOTHESES. If your students are making random quesses for their hypotheses, they are demonstrating the activity will be meaningless to them. They won't know why they are going through the steps of the procedure. Hypotheses are written as the effect of one variable on another. For Example, what is the sunlight on the height of a plant? There are particular materials that are used, there is a method (or procedure) designed for answering the question (or testing the hypothesis), there are data collected or observations made, the data are analyzed or the observations discussed, and there is a conclusion.
Which of these components of the experiment will you control? Which will you leave to your students?
Before deciding how much control to give to your students, consider the pedagogical purpose for doing the experiment, the nature of the materials they will be using, the size of the space they have to work in, the nature of the students you are working with.
Pedagogical purpose of the experiment: if you have just explained a concept to the students, and want them to see the concept at work, you will not use an experiment; rather you use what could more accurately be called a pseudo-experiment. You will choose an activity that is unlikely to o wrong; the students will follow a procedure in recipe-like fashion, all doing the same thing. These kinds of activities are unlikely to change student' preconceptions. Student know the activities are contrived, and they know that they are expected to come up with a particular right answer. There are no surprises for them or for you. Pseudo-experiments are like demonstrations, but the students carry them out themselves. It is certainly better for the students to carry out these pseudo-experiments than to observe a demonstration, and it is better to observe a demonstration than just to hear a lecture.
If however, there are many possible answers to the problem, or if the particular answers do not matter, then you will give more control to your students. If you want your students to learn that there are different explanations for the same problem, or if the problem is complex, you will give more control to your students.
Safety: This is the single most important reason for giving guidance to students. I try to use materials which are as safe as possible, because even in a recipe situation, students will not read the instructions, or will slip while walking past boiling water, or something... Every year, someone somewhere will lean too close to the Bunsen burner, or will add the wrong chemical to a mix. When there is a safety issue, I describe the particular problem to begin with. Fox example, when I demonstrate dipping money in rubbing alcohol and then lighting it on fire, I show that I hold the bill with forceps and that my hand is not above or below the bill. I do not want the flames burning up on to my hand, experiment, I have students try out only under close supervision. One group tries it at a time, explanatianing to the class what their hypothesis is and why their method will test the hypothesis.) I always have hair elastics in my desk drawer, so that student with long hair can tie it back before working with the Bunsen burner. Etc.
The major hint about safety-writing the safety considerations into a procedure does not mean that students will read, believe, remembe