Doing Inquiry like Scientists: Elementary Students’ Scientific Inquiry in an Untact Online Science Learning Environment

Abstract

In this study, a scientific inquiry program was developed to allow elementary school students to practice self-directed inquiry, as scientists do, in untact online exploration. This study examined the main characteristics of student exploration that appeared in online scientific inquiry and investigated how students perceived it. For this study, 167 elementary school students from all over Korea participated in an untact online scientific inquiry program. The students explored a total of seven inquiry topics, including ‘Making a strong and beautiful bridge,’ read activity guidance, and conducted inquiry activities for three weeks. As a result of the study, it was found that students positively and actively experience the process of conducting scientific inquiry just ‘like scientists.’ However, many students also expressed frustration and failure to solve a given inquiry problem. The students showed a variety of exploratory processes. Some students tried to explain scientifically why these results and phenomena appear while other students simply repeated trial and error—rather than going through the process of building evidence and justifying their findings by explaining reasonably, they did not think of a better way to solve the problem. Furthermore, the students expressed the deficiencies of the untact online inquiry situation and their regret or difficulty with it. Educational implications for science education are discussed to promote effective online scientific inquiry in untact mode.