Abstract
The present case study examines a teacher’s scaffolding strategies supporting his students during a twelve-week open inquiry project at an upper secondary school. We use interaction analysis to identify how he provides structure and space in the different phases of open inquiry as well as how it constitutes the students’ inquiry process. The study reveals that the teacher scaffolded this open inquiry in two opposing ways; he created space for the students to make their own experiences and ideas, which eventually set up the need for more directed scaffolding to discuss the challenges students experienced, and directing students’ ideas in certain directions in phases with structure. We suggest that the interplay between structure and space creates what can be seen as a driving force providing both exploration and direction for open inquiry. Moreover, we propose that the dual concept of ‘structure and space’ can work as a thinking tool to promote teachers’ competence on how to scaffold more authentic versions of scientific inquiry in schools.
Highlights
Science education reforms all over the world advocate a view of learning science that emphasises inquiry (e.g. European Commission, 2007; Norwegian Ministry of Education, 2006; NRC, 2000)
There must be some kind of balance between offering the students structure, which scaffolds the essential features of scientific inquiry (Asay & Orgill, 2010; Windschitl, Thompson & Braaten, 2008), and space to develop and express their thoughts, ideas and tentative understandings (Wells, 1999). van der Valk and de Jong (2009) suggest that teachers need to know how to guide students’ open inquiry projects, ‘especially the ability to know when and how to give students a well-balanced combination of “structure” for open inquiry learning and sufficient “space” for that’ (p. 829)
The second part shows the result of the interaction analysis, revealing two main emerging issues concerning how the teacher’s alternation between providing structure and space constituted the students’ inquiry process
Summary
Science education reforms all over the world advocate a view of learning science that emphasises inquiry (e.g. European Commission, 2007; Norwegian Ministry of Education, 2006; NRC, 2000). The authors provide examples of several scaffolding tools, but they do not provide empirical data on how these tools were used by the teachers and what the consequences were for the students’ learning process and how they were used to provide structure and space. They do not provide descriptions of what the term ‘space’ might constitute in open inquiry. The research focus for the study, is how a teacher scaffolds the students’ learning of the essential features of scientific inquiry and the development of autonomy during open inquiry
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