Scientific Inquiry Learning Research Articles

Erratum to: Enhancing use of learning sciences research in planning for and supporting educational change: Leveraging and building social networks

This paper explores practical ways to engage two areas of educational scholarship—research on science learning and research on social networks—to inform efforts to plan and support implementation of new standards. The standards, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS; NGSS Lead States in Next generation science standards: For states, by states. National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2013), have been adopted by U.S. states serving more than one-quarter of all students, and they are grounded in decades of research on how students learn science. In this paper we discuss efforts to leverage recent research on social networks to inform standards implementation across a set of professional associations and school districts. These efforts are being undertaken by the Research + Practice Collaboratory which is testing a set of conjectures related to how the knowledge base from both research and practice can mutually inform STEM education improvement.

Science Education

Advances in technology, science, and learning sciences research over the past 100 years have reshaped science education. This chapter focuses on how investigators from varied fields of inquiry who initially worked separately began to interact, eventually formed partnerships, and recently integrated their perspectives to strengthen science education. Advances depended on the broadening of the participants in science education research, starting with psychologists, science discipline experts, and science educators; adding science teachers, psychometricians, computer scientists, and sociologists; and eventually including leaders in cultural studies, linguistics, and neuroscience. This process depended on renegotiating power structures, deliberate funding decisions by the National Science Foundation and others, and sustained, creative teamwork. It reflects a growing commitment to ensure that all learners are respected and that all students learn to address the complex scientific dilemmas they face in their lives. This chapter traces the evolution of research on science education in the United States with a focus on 5- to 17-year-olds. It highlights trends in the view of the learner, the design of instruction, the role of professional development, and the impact of technology. The chapter closes with recommendations designed to realize the full potential of these advances.

Dialogue as Data in Learning Analytics for Productive Educational Dialogue

Accounts of the nature and role of productive dialogue in fostering educational outcomes are now well established in the learning sciences and are underpinned by bodies of strong empirical research and theorising. Allied to this there has been longstanding interest in fostering computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) in support of such dialogue. Learning analytic environments such as massive open online courses (moocs) and online learning environments (such as virtual learning environments, VLEs and learning management systems, LMSs) provide ripe potential spaces for learning dialogue. In prior research, preliminary steps have been taken to detect occurrences of productive dialogue automatically through the use of automated analysis techniques. Such advances have the potential to foster effective dialogue through the use of learning analytic techniques that scaffold, give feedback on, and provide pedagogic contexts promoting, such dialogue. However, the translation of learning science research to the online context is complex, requiring the operationalization of constructs theorized in different contexts (often face to face), and based on different data-sets and structures (often spoken dialogue).. In this paper we explore what could constitute the effective analysis of this kind of productive dialogue, arguing that it requires consideration of three key facets of the dialogue: features indicative of productive dialogue; the unit of segmentation; and the interplay of features and segmentation with the temporal underpinning of learning contexts. We begin by outlining what we mean by ‘productive educational dialogue’, before going on to discuss prior work that has been undertaken to date on its manual and automated analysis. We then highlight ongoing challenges for the development of computational analytic approaches to such data, discussing the representation of features, segments, and temporality in computational modelling. The paper thus foregrounds, to both learning-science-oriented and computationally-oriented researchers, key considerations in respect of the analysis dialogue data in emerging learning analytics environments. The paper provides a novel, conceptually driven, stance on the state of the contemporary analytic challenges faced in the treatment of dialogue as a form of data across on and offline sites of learning.

Enhancing use of learning sciences research in planning for and supporting educational change: Leveraging and building social networks

Enhancing use of learning sciences research in planning for and supporting educational change: Leveraging and building social networks

Integrating Scientific Inquiry Learning into Project Course of Vocational High Schools to Construct and Verify Core Competency Indicators

Integrating Scientific Inquiry Learning into Project Course of Vocational High Schools to Construct and Verify Core Competency Indicators

Evaluating indicator-based methods of ‘measuring long-term impacts of a science center on its community’

This article addresses some of the challenges faced when attempting to evaluate the long-term impact of informal science learning interventions. To contribute to the methodological development of informal science learning research, we critically examine (Falk and Needham (2011) Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 48: 1–12.) study of the California Science Center's long-term impact on the Los Angeles population's understanding, attitude and interest in science. This study has been put forward as a good model of long-term impact evaluation for other researchers and informal science learning institutions to emulate. Moreover, the study's claims about the Science Center's positive impacts have been widely cited. This essay highlights the methodological limitations of Falk and Needham's innovation of using an indicator-based impact measure (a ‘marker’) designed to limit their reliance on self-report data, and points to more valid options for assessing long-term learning or attitudinal impacts. We recommend that future research employ more direct measurements of learning outcomes grounded in established social scientific methodology to evaluate informal science learning impacts. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 53: 60–64, 2016.

THE EFFECT OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY LEARNING MODEL AND CREATIVE THINKING ABILITY ON SCIENCE PROCESS SKILLS OF STUDENT

The aims of this research were to analyze science process skills of students using scientific inquiry Learning Model is better than science process skills of students using conventional learning, analyze science process skills of students who have high category in creative thinking ability better than low category in creative thinking ability, and analyzethe interaction between scientific inquiry learning and the level of creative thinking ability in improving the science process skills. The research type was quasi experiment and two group pretest-posttest designs were used in this study. The population of the study was grade X of SMAN 1 Stabat Academic Year 2014/2015. The sample was chosen by using cluster random class technique. The sample was divided into two classes, the experiment class taught by scientific inquiry and control class taught by conventional learning. The instrument was consisting of science process skills test and creative thinking ability test. Data in this research was analyzed by using two way ANOVA. The results of this research showed that the scientific inquiry learning model was better than conventional learning in improving the students science process skills, the science process skills of the students who had high category in creative thinking ability was better than low category, and there was interaction between scientific inquiry learning model and the level of creative thinking ability in improving students science process skills.

Cognitive Prosthetics for Fostering Learning: A View from the Learning Sciences

This article is aimed at helping AI researchers and practitioners imagine roles intelligent technologies might play in the many different and varied ecosystems in which people learn. My observations are based on learning sciences research of the past several decades, the possibilities of new technologies of the past few years, and my experience as program officer for the National Science Foundation’s Cyberlearning and Future Learning Technologies program. My thesis is that new technologies have potential to transform possibilities for fostering learning in both formal and informal learning environments by making it possible and manageable for learners to engage in the kinds of project work that professionals engage in and learn important content, skills, practices, habits, and dispositions from those experiences. The expertise of AI researchers and practitioners is critical to that vision, but it will require teaming up with others — for example, technology imagineers, educators, and learning scientists.

The Intellectual Structure of Metacognitive Scaffolding in Science Education: A Co-citation Network Analysis

The issues of metacognitive scaffolding in science education (MSiSE) have become increasingly popular and important. Differing from previous content reviews, this study proposes a series of quantitative computer-based analyses by integrating document co-citation analysis, social network analysis, and exploratory factor analysis to explore the intellectual structure of the MSiSE literature (i.e. the relationships within and between subfields of MSiSE). Co-citation refers to any two articles that are jointly referenced in other articles. After the computation of co-citation analysis, 27 articles that have been co-cited at least once by follow-up studies as references were identified as the final set of core articles. The whole co-citation profile of 27 cores with the 434 links was then visualized in a network through social network analysis, representing an overview for the intellectual structure of core MSiSE studies. The most cross-referenced underpinnings in the network focused on adaptive scaffolding for self-regulated learning to enhance students’ conceptual understanding and on younger students’ metacognition in online science inquiry learning environments. Furthermore, two emerging topics in the network were identified through an exploratory factor analysis as “non-technological metacognitive scaffolding media,” and “behavior patterns & task analysis in technology-infused environments.” Overall, the study provides an innovative review method of scholarly communication in the MSiSE literature.

A Call to Action: The Challenges of Creative Teaching and Learning

Background/ContextIn spite of the widely acknowledged importance of creativity to society and the economy, scholars have had difficulty providing research-based recommendations for how to foster creativity in schools. The article extends three strands of research that have attempted to provide such recommendations: studies of whether creativity training enhances domain-general creativity; studies of whether arts education and arts integration enhance cognitive skills that transfer to other content areas; and studies of collaborative learning environments, designed to foster deeper conceptual understanding in the content areas.Purpose/ObjectiveThe focus of the article is to provide recommendations for how to design learning environments to foster greater creativity. I bring together arts education research, creativity research, and learning sciences research to provide recommendations for how to design learning environments to foster creative learning outcomes.Research DesignThis is primarily a review article. It provides meta-analyses of three strands of research—creativity training, arts education, and learning sciences. The conclusion of this review is that domain-general creativity training is less effective than domain-specific changes in how each subject is taught.ConclusionsWe are not likely to enhance student creativity by teaching for creativity in a distinct, domain general way. Instead, educating for creativity is most effective when schools change the way each subject is taught. Learning sciences research has provided strong evidence that the most creative learning, in all subjects, results from pedagogical strategies that are active, constructivist, collaborative, and improvisational. I provide research-based recommendations for how to design learning environments that result in creative learning outcomes.

Social Regulation of Learning During Collaborative Inquiry Learning in Science: How does it emerge and what are its functions?

Students’ ability to regulate their learning is considered important for the quality of collaborative inquiry learning. However, there is still limited understanding about how students engage in social forms of regulation processes and what roles these regulatory processes may play during collaborative learning. The purpose of this study was to identify when and how co- and shared regulation of metacognitive, emotional and motivational processes emerge and function during collaborative inquiry learning in science. Two groups of three students (aged 12) from a private primary school in Turkey were videotaped during collaborative inquiry activities in a naturalistic classroom setting over a seven-week period, and the transcripts were analysed in order to identify their use of regulation processes. Moreover, this was combined with the analysis of stimulated-recall interviews with the student groups. Results indicated that co- and shared regulation processes were often initiated by particular events and played a crucial role in the success of students’ collaborative inquiry learning. Co-regulation of metacognitive processes had the function of stimulating students to reflect upon and clarify their thinking, as well as facilitating the construction of new scientific understanding. Shared regulation of metacognitive processes helped students to build a shared understanding of the task, clarify and justify their shared perspective, and sustain the ongoing knowledge co-construction. Moreover, the use of shared emotional and motivational regulation was identified as important for sustaining reciprocal interactions and creating a positive socio-emotional atmosphere within the groups. In addition, the findings revealed links between the positive quality of group interactions and the emergence of co- and shared regulation of metacognitive processes. This study highlights the importance of fostering students’ acquisition and use of regulation processes during collaborative inquiry learning.

Dataset of scientific inquiry learning environment

AbstractThis paper presents the dataset collected from student interactions with INQPRO, a computer‐based scientific inquiry learning environment. The dataset contains records of 100 students and is divided into two portions. The first portion comprises (1) raw log data, capturing the student's name, interfaces visited, the interface components the student interacted with, the actions performed by the students and the values asserted at a particular interface component; (2) transformed log data, a restructured and refined raw log data that take the form of an attribute‐value pair record. The second portion of the dataset consists of pretest‐posttest results. This paper begins with an overview of INQPRO and the discussion on how student–computer interactions were captured. Subsequently, the process of preprocessing and transformation of raw log data into relational database tables will be presented. In this paper, two applications of INQPRO dataset are presented; the first application discusses how students' levels of scientific inquiry skills can be extracted from the dataset while the second application demonstrates how the dataset supports the prediction of conceptual change occurrence. The paper ends with highlighting potential future research work by using this dataset, which includes techniques to elicit clusters of students as well as provision of adaptive pedagogical interventions as the student interacts with INQPRO. In conclusion, this dataset attempts to contribute to the research community through: (1) time and cost saving in acquiring field data, and (2) as a benchmark dataset to evaluate and compare different predictive models.

The Principle-Practical Discourse Edge: Elementary Preservice and Mentor Teachers Working Together on Colearning Tasks

A major challenge in preparing elementary teachers to teach inquiry-based science is finding qualified mentor teachers who use research-based approaches to teach science in their classrooms. This situation means preservice teachers often see few connections between the research-based principles for teaching science they learn in university-based coursework and the science teaching practices they see in their classroom field placements. We attempted to resolve this situation by creating opportunities for preservice and mentor teachers to learn together. We developed colearning tasks where preservice and mentor teachers collaborated to apply principles of science inquiry and equitable learning to analyze and modify common elementary science curriculum materials. We borrowed from the field of ecology to develop an edge effects framework that enabled an analysis of when and how preservice and mentor teachers connected principle- and practical-based discourses while engaged in the colearning tasks. Our findings suggest that the colearning tasks supported preservice and mentor teachers in connecting research-based principles to practical classroom contexts. However, working on these tasks together was sometimes challenging for both preservice and mentor teachers. We discuss the affordances and constraints of the colearning tasks and the framing of the principle–practical divide as an edge rather than a gap.

Exploring effectiveness of simulation-based inquiry learning in science with integration of formative assessment

This paper presents the effect of simulation-based inquiry (SimIn) integrated with formative assessment (FA) on students’ conceptual learning of buoyancy-driven phenomena. In this study, we examined students’ conceptual learning performance from two Thai public schools collected in two studies. In order to broaden the scope of the study’s method, a two-step experiment was conducted: the first study recruited 120 ninth-grade students who agreed to participate, and they were assigned into two experimental groups and one control group. The control group received only SimIn, without integration of FA; the first experimental group participated with SimIn integrated with FA method of agree and disagree statements (SimIn-FAAD and the second experimental group participated with SimIn integrated with FA method of agreement circle (SimIn-FAAC), involving group participation. A multiple-group pretest–posttest experimental design was used, and data were analyzed using one-way ANCOVA, plus a protocol analysis was done to verify the value of the FA integration. The second study compared 39 twelfth-grade students’ conceptual understanding scores, and investigated the pattern of, and the quantitative changes in, the process of conceptual change based on a one-group, pretest–posttest method. The result showed that students’ conceptual understanding scores were significantly improved after participating in the experimental learning. Moreover, the integration of FA into SimIn produced a better progression of scientific understanding than without FA. This finding suggests that the integration of FA into SimIn can be used to effectively support construction of comprehensive understanding of science concepts in the natural setting of school science learning.

Animated pedagogical agents effects on enhancing student motivation and learning in a science inquiry learning environment

This study focuses on the design and testing of a motivational animated pedagogical agent (APA) in an inquiry learning environment on kinematics. The aim of including the APA was to enhance students’ perceptions of task relevance and self-efficacy. Given the under-representation of girls in science classrooms, special attention was given to designing an APA that would appeal to the female students. A review of the literature suggested that the best design solution would be an agent who was female, young, attractive, and “cool”. An experiment compared three conditions: agent (image and voice), voice (no image), and control (no image and no voice). The research question was whether students’ motivation and knowledge changed over time as they worked in the inquiry learning environment, and whether condition and gender affected such changes. Participants were 61 third-year students (mean age 14.7 years) from a secondary school. Gender was distributed evenly within and across conditions. A significant main effect of time on self-efficacy was found, with self-efficacy beliefs increasing significantly for both boys and girls. In addition, there was a significant interaction between time, condition, and gender for self-efficacy. About halfway during training, girls’ self-efficacy beliefs significantly increased in both experimental conditions and decreased in the control condition. For boys the opposite pattern was found. Girls also gave higher appraisals for the agent. Students in all three conditions realized significant knowledge gains, which did not differ by gender. The discussion critically considers the need for, and design of motivational scaffolding in inquiry learning environments.

Measuring Knowledge Integration Learning of Energy Topics: A two-year longitudinal study

Although researchers call for inquiry learning in science, science assessments rarely capture the impact of inquiry instruction. This paper reports on the development and validation of assessments designed to measure middle-school students’ progress in gaining integrated understanding of energy while studying an inquiry-oriented curriculum. The assessment development was guided by the knowledge integration framework. Over 2 years of implementation, more than 4,000 students from 4 schools participated in the study, including a cross-sectional and a longitudinal cohort. Results from item response modeling analyses revealed that: (a) the assessments demonstrated satisfactory psychometric properties in terms of reliability and validity; (b) both the cross-sectional and longitudinal cohorts made progress on integrating their understanding energy concepts; and (c) among many factors (e.g. gender, grade, school, and home language) associated with students’ science performance, unit implementation was the strongest predictor.

Operationalizing and Detecting Disengagement Within Online Science Microworlds

In recent years, there has been increased interest in engagement during learning. This is of particular interest in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics domains, in which many students struggle and where the United States needs skilled workers. This article lays out some issues important for framing research on this topic and provides a review of some existing work with similar goals on engagement in science learning. Specifically, here we seek to help better concretize engagement, a fuzzy construct, by operationalizing and detecting (i.e., identifying using a computational method) disengaged behaviors that are antithetical to engagement. We, in turn, describe our real-time detector (i.e., machine learned model) of disengaged behavior and how it was developed. Last, we address our ongoing research on how our detector of disengaged behavior will be used to intervene in real time to better support students' science inquiry learning in Inq-ITS (Inquiry-Intelligent Tutoring System; Gobert, Sao Pedro, Baker, Toto, & Montalvo, 2012; Gobert, Sao Pedro, Raziuddin, & Baker, 2013).

Impacts and Characteristics of Computer-Based Science Inquiry Learning Environments for Precollege Students

The National Science Foundation–sponsored report Fostering Learning in the Networked World called for “a common, open platform to support communities of developers and learners in ways that enable both to take advantage of advances in the learning sciences.” We review research on science inquiry learning environments (ILEs) to characterize current platforms. We searched databases and 11 major science and technology journals and identified 30 distinct ILEs investigated in articles published from 2008 onwards. We use research-based inquiry principles to analyze ILE features that support learners, teachers, developers, and researchers. We identify ILEs that are taking advantage of learning sciences research, building on the accomplishments of others, and creating the platforms envisioned in the report. We hope that this review will help teachers, designers, and researchers identify platforms they can customize and enhance rather than starting anew if unnecessary. Enhancing existing platforms combines the efforts of many individuals and, thus, strengthens the field.

The Practicality of Principled Practical Knowledge: A Response to Janssen, Westbroek, and Doyle

“Practicality Studies” (Janssen, Westbroek, & Doyle, 2015/this issue) starts with a critical commentary on “Principled Practical Knowledge: Not a Bridge but a Ladder” (Bereiter, 2014) but consists in the main of an essay on what the authors consider to be really practical knowledge for teachers. The gist of their criticism is that “Bereiter and with him a large part of the design research community in the learning sciences underestimate the magnitude of … usability issues and in fact believe that much of the task of usability is already solved by design research in the learning sciences” (p. 177). The authors argue persuasively for giving “practicality studies” a place in learning sciences research, but their subtitle—“How to Move From What Works in Principle to What Works in Practice”—claims too much and makes an invidious distinction.

Enhancement of Grade 7 Students’ Learning Achievement of the Matter Separation by using Inquiry Learning Activities

This study aimed to enhance students’ learning achievement of matter separation by using five science inquiry learning activities (12hours) on separation of natural substances. The participants, purposively selected, were 33 Grade 7 students in the first academic semester of 2011 at Ban-Nathung School in Sisaket province of Thailand. The data collecting tools consisted of a learning achievement test of matter separation and a survey of students’ attitudes towards learning science. The dependent sample t-test analysis indicated that the students obtained a post-achievement test score (mean 14.24, SD 2.45) higher than the pre-achievement test score (mean 7.73, SD 2.76) at the 0.05 level of statistical significance. However, the students obtained a retention test score (mean 14.09, SD 2.17) 30 days after the post-achievement test that was not different from the post- achievement test score at the 0.05 level of statistical significance. In addition, students’ attitudes towards learning science after the implementation of science inquiry learning activities (mean 89.00, SD 8.97) was statistically significantly higher than prior to using the activities (mean 77.76, SD 8.39) at the 0.05 level of statistical significance. In conclusion, the implementation of inquiry learning activities was effective to enhance students’ learning achievement of matter separation as well as their attitudes towards learning science.