Hydratation of legumes

Author: Ana M. Abril, Marta Romero, Antonio Quesada and Fco. Javier García

The main objective of this activity is to provide teachers with an opportunity to experience an IBL pedagogical approach as students. In order to do so, they are presented a problematic situation they have to face and solve using an inquiry approach (posing key questions to guide the inquiry process, formulating hypothesis, designing experiments to test them, measuring, acquiring and representing data, drawing conclusions from evidence and communicating results).

Pedagogical issues

Teachers should start by clearly stating the learning goals of the activity and promoting an atmosphere of confidence where students are encouraged to express and exchange alternative viewpoints and strategies, with no right or wrong answers, but intellectually enriching challenges.
Throughout the whole process teachers should try to encourage reasoning, build on students’ previous knowledge and conceptions, and celebrate mistakes as opportunities for learning and improving. It is also important to efficiently orientate group discussions, help students to make connection between ideas and draw out the important ideas.

Potential for PD

As many learners express, it is when you experience science through inquiry that you realize the importance of learning to do science, as well as learning about science. Then, you start to understand the meaning of inquiry and its value, both for scientific knowledge development and for science learning.
From this point of view, the implementation of the previously described working package with pre-service or in-service teachers will provide them with an opportunity to perform IBL activities as students. This experience will certainly help them to recognize the potential learning benefits associated with IBL approaches and to reflect on the key aspects associated with an efficient implementation. The activity could be useful to question teachers’ initial beliefs about what is inquiry and about the teaching of science through an inquiry approach.

In PD sessions, and once teachers’ have lived the whole sequence, group work followed by whole-class debate could be an effective way to promote a reflection on key issues like:

  • What are the main processes involved in an inquiry activity like this?
  • What makes this activity different from other teaching activities you normally use?
  • If you wanted to use this activity with your students, how your role as teacher will be affected?
  • Will you need different teaching competencies? What will these competencies be?

Commentary

There is a great deal of evidence showing not only a lack of students’ motivation towards science and mathematics (Rocard Report, 2007), but also that science learning often becomes a “transitory experience with little application to future thought and action” in students’ lives (National Research Council, 2000: 121). Research has repeatedly shown that very often students just learn normative knowledge in a superficial way, just to face or deal with school activities and exams. However, they are unable to apply scientific theories to explain real world phenomena, and their preconceptions persist after years of instruction (Covián y Celemín, 2008; Franco and Taber, 2008; Taber, 2002). Meaningful acquisition of scientific theories is promoted through active, collaborative, and inquiry-based learning, in authentic contexts. According to the National Research Council (2000), inquiry-based teaching may be understood as the experiences that help students acquire concepts of science, skills and abilities of scientific inquiry, and understanding about scientific inquiry.

Links

 
Last change: 17 november 2011
Comment
 
 
 
 
Quick Links
Back to top