Children's Learning and Inquiry

Draft

As science educators we are interested in offering a convincing account to parents, teachers, administrators and others as to why inquiry is important to learning. This piece describes one view that can help create impressions of learning science using an inquiry approach.

Figure 1 illustrates this view, which begins when a child has an experience with an unfamiliar phenomenon that she would like to understand. As she observes the new phenomenon she raises specific questions. In order to answer her questions, at first (consciously or not) she may think back to a related previous experience and attempt to use an idea that explained the previous experience to explain the new phenomenon. We refer to this as a "linking idea"¹ because it links an idea which explains a previous experience to a new experience. This linking idea may or may not accurately explain the new experience. It is an untested possible explanation which can be called a hypothesis.

The next step is to plan and conduct an investigation to test the hypothesis. One way to do that is to assume that the idea is sound, and to make a prediction based on this assumption. The child can set up a situation (an experiment) where she can extend the implications of the idea to it's logical conclusions. She can carry out the experiment to investigate or test if the results match the expectations, in order to support or challenge the soundness of the idea. This is a way of gathering evidence to support or challenge the working hypothesis. In order to properly interpret the results, it is important that this experiment also be a fair test using controlled variables.

If the idea is not supported by fair testing, alternative previous experiences can be accessed in order to suggest different "linking ideas" to be tested. Once the idea has been successfully tested, a new idea emerges, somewhat different from the linking idea because it applies to a different and new experience, and is supported by information gained by fair testing. This idea is communicated to others so that it can become part of their experience, so they can then test it further in their own manner.

To make this general process concrete, we can take an example that occurred in a class of students in Great Britain². Eleven year olds studying sinking and floating used varnished wood blocks in tubs of water. They noticed that some of the blocks stuck together and wondered why this was happening. Their "new experience" was the wet blocks that stuck together. This caused them to consider other things they knew that stick together, such as magnets. Their linking idea was that wood blocks might become magnetic when they were wet. If they had gone on on to test this idea they could have predicted that because magnets stick to each other, a wet block might be magnetic and stick to a magnet (see Figure 2).

They could have disconfirmed this idea by testing it. Then, they might have had to access another linking experience that might explain the situation. They could have come up with the idea that other things that stick together, such as suction cups, were held together by air pressure. So the linking idea that they could have considered testing would be that air pressure can make wet blocks stick together.

This way of thinking is informative to understanding both children's and adult's learning and it uses an inquiry approach (observing, questioning, hypothesizing, predicting, investigating, interpreting and communicating). One main difference is that adults have more previous experiences to draw upon for linking ideas. Children may find that they have so little experience to draw upon that they arrive at seemingly outlandish explanations. This supports the importance of giving ample time for exploration with materials and phenomena in order to provide enough foundational experience to draw upon for explanations. It is incumbent on those designing classroom experiences to insure that a wide repertoire of activities is available for children.

By using inquiry processes in science, children can become used to testing their own ideas in a fair and self-directed way to confirm their working hypotheses and to generate new ones. However, this process also might uncover misleading information so that the evidence children gather may seem to support invalid conclusions. In these cases it is important to support the soundness of students' reasoning and their use of the process skills while suggesting alternative paths for testing. Children may simply not have tested the idea generally enough to disconfirm it. In these cases, further testing can be advocated.

It also happens that children (and adults) can hold on to their ideas quite strongly. While guiding them in the direction of scientific thinking and content, unless children are presented with compelling evidence to change their thinking there is little reason to do so. Inquiry methods provide fair test avenues for gathering such compelling evidence.

Children observe, raise questions and make hypotheses all the time. They also infer, they gather evidence and make predictions and form conclusions. The important thing about their hypotheses is not whether they are right or wrong but whether they are logical or reasonable based on the child's own experience. Children's ideas aren't frivolous; instead these ideas are very firmly rooted in their own experiences. Yet sometimes they do not have enough experience to explain an event. When this occurs, we prefer not to use the term misconception because it implies that something is wrong with how children have arrived at ideas rather than a fundamental lack of experience. Children's ideas may sometimes be naive or not fully formed but they typically have a rationale.

It is always a good idea to find out what children know---for example, to probe their understanding of magnetism. When we know what children think, it is easier to help develop their existing ideas towards the "big ideas" of science. In focusing on misconceptions, the emphasis is on what the learner is not capable of understanding or articulating. Yet we know that children's thinking can be quite powerful, and that it may include correct reasoning even when an answer may be incorrect. As educators we know that there are many different ways to express understanding. In fact, there is much recent research in cognitive development that gives a powerful view of what children already do know. As our ways of measuring young children's understanding become more sophisticated, we find out much more about how much children do know and are able to understand about science.

² Harlen, 1993, The Teaching of Science in Primary School, p 21.

Adapted from Harlen, 1993, The Teaching of Science inPrimary Schools, p 13.

Adapted from Harlen, 1993, The Teaching of Science inPrimary Schools, p 12.