Science

Brave Old World - Rediscovering the

Nature of Inquiry in Our Classrooms

Chris Thompson

OLT Extension Grant, 2014: Taking Inquiry-

Oriented Learning to the Teaching Coalface

with Gerry Rayner, Theo Hughes & Les Kirkup.

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Our Journey – The IDEA Experiments

2012

Mood For Change

What We Did & How We Did It

Getting People On Board

2013

Student Perceptions

The IDEAs are Spreading

2014

OLT Extension Grant

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Mood For Change

Why change anything?

The LTAS project

Changes in Secondary

Education

(National Curriculum)

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Mood For Change

TLOs have been drafted for most disciplines.

Take these chemistry TLOs for example:

Do these things REALLY take place in a teaching lab??

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Answer

The IDEA Experiments

Inquiry Design

Explore

?

The IDEA Experiments

Here’s what our Monash

Science Teaching Associates

think as a group (n ~ 48)

Perceptions of Inquiry Evaluation

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Does it work?

We definitely think so!

Is it easy to set up?

Design

Demonstrators

Are my colleagues on board?

Yes, and the IDEAS are

spreading.

Higher year levels

Beyond our Faculty

The IDEA Experiments

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“Did you enjoy this practical?”

• 72 % - yes, 18 % - no

Some of the reasoning from students who did not enjoy the

experiment is exemplified by the following comments:

“I did not like the lack of guidance.”

“There was not enough guidance - didn't know what I was

trying to accomplish at the end.”

“Was pretty lost at first.”

“It was a bit harder and there wasn't as much guidance.”

“Too open ended not much guidance.”

Student Perspectives

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“What did you think was the main lesson to be learnt from

this practical?”:

"How to work as a scientist without any knowledge of (a)

substance and determine it through experimentation"

"Experimenters face a great deal of challenges when they

are trying to find out something unknown. Even when they

take all necessary precautions, they still may be faced with

errors."

"The issues and situations a chemist could experience in

the field."

Student Perspectives

Controlling the chaos

Using ‘inquiry’ in the classroom does not necessarily mean

completely open-ended activities.

Herron’s Hierachy of Inquiry (1971!)

An OLT Extension Grant!

Aim: Maintain the momentum of Les’s IOL Fellowship by

generating the changes required for genuine inquiry -

from design to the teaching coalface.

Deliverables

1. IOL workshops – Roadtrip!

La Trobe, Fed Uni, UTas, Deakin

Target audience TAs /

demonstrators

2. An IOL forum

3. An IOL Best Practice booklet

1. IOL Workshops

The ACME Paper Towel Evaluation

The Inquiry / Problem / Question

Split into Groups and Brainstorm for 5

minutes

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1. IOL Workshops

The ACME Paper Towel Evaluation

How can this approach be applied to our laboratories?

What is holding IOL back in our classrooms?

How much IOL is appropriate?

What role for the recipe?

1. IOL Workshops

Great discussions around challenges/difficulties/concerns.

Already large, and ever growing cohorts

Cost

Time

Assessment

Future-shock! Abbott-Pyne Era?

Solutions!

1. IOL Workshops

But best of all, we witnessed the growth of a community of

practice …

2. IOL Forum

Keynote Presentation from OLT Fellow Prof Les Kirkup

A summary of our experiences via the IOL workshops

Six vignettes – 20 minute presentations showcasing what

people are doing in their classrooms

~100 delegates from 15 different institutions

Two vignettes from secondary teachers … we need to get

moving!

3. IOL Good Practice Booklet

Designed to be a resourse for

people wanting to jump in the

deep end.

Transform stale old recipe pracs

into active-learning classes.

Trade secrets

Exemplars from practictioners

Honest, reflective accounts of

how these developments

actually went.

Research?

Perceptions of inquiry.

Student vs demonstrators vs academic staff – intriguing!

What’s missing?

Is IOL really effective in enhancing students’ scientific

literacy?

Do students really gain the higher order skills through

embedding and scaffolding IOL in science degrees?

How to measure this?