Doing Science: Introducing Scientific Inquiry to Elementary Classes

Resonance

article

Sujatha Varadarajan¹  Sujeet Sanzgiri¹ 

[1] Center Coordinator Multidisciplinary Curriculum and Pedagogy MSFDA

关键词: Scientific inquiry;    scientific thinking;    primary and middle school;    experiments;    design.;   

DOI  :  10.1007/s12045-023-1623-3

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

Science textbooks impart static content knowledge to students, which means exposing students to facts, laws and theories. However, the interesting and important process of arriving at these laws and theories is often neglected. Additionally, science experiments---one of the ways to arrive at such knowledge [1]---are largely taught only to secondary and higher secondary students. The possibility of utilizing the laboratory spaces for exploring and introducing scientific thinking, inquiry and process skills to primary and middle school students is mostly ignored, even though experimentation is captivating and motivating to all age groups. Some reasons quoted for the misplaced importance are---infrastructure issues, resource constraints, safety, etc.To address this concern, a qualitative exploratory study was conducted with a small group ($n=28$) of primary and middle school students from different schools who were involved in a weekend post-school activity at an activity centre in Pune. The action research focused on designing and exploring activities that would require limited resources while engaging students in meaningful discussion, investigation, data collection and collaborative critical reviews. The experiments' topics were particularly chosen so that students were familiar with them from their school curriculum. Data collection included field observation, feedback forms, students’ diaries and questionnaires.The qualitative analysis of the study results indicates that students when exposed to such activities, started to get a sense of scientific process skills. The activities being from a familiar context, students had pre-requisite knowledge, resulting in student-driven discussions. Additionally, we found that, given an opportunity, middle school students are capable of engaging in model-based reasoning while primary students learn to collect data. Our result indicates that exposure over an extended time period is needed to introduce the concept of variables in experiments to students.

【 授权许可】

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