SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY

Definition:

Teaching science as inquiry provides teachers with the opportunity to develop student abilities and to enrich student understanding of science. As students focus on the processes of doing investigations, they develop the ability to ask questions, investigate aspects of the world around them and use their observations to construct reasonable explanations for the questions posed.

Basic Skills of Scientific Inquiry:

· Observing

· Classifying and sequencing

· Communicating

· Measuring

· Predicting

· Hypothesizing

· Inferring

· Defining, controlling, and manipulating variable in experimentation

· Designing, constructing and interpreting models

· Interpreting, analyzing and evaluating data

Uses of Scientific Inquiry:

· Make connections with world situations

· To encourage more active problem solving approach to learning and thinking

· To apply math skills

· Review what is already known in light of experimental evidence

· Propose answers, explanations and predictions

· Use tools to gather, analyze and interpret data

Example:

What Factors Determine the Visibility of a Rainbow?

Working Model

Sunlight travels straight through rain drops where it is dispersed into colors,

and then the light travels straight into my eyes.

Proposed Experiment

While it is raining early one morning, I will face toward the rising sun

in the east to view a rainbow.

Predicted Results

I will see a rainbow in the sky as I look east on a rainy morning.

Actual Results

No rainbow was observed toward the east.

However, I did see a rainbow when I turned around and looked west.

Conclusion

My working model requires revision. The sun must be behind me to view a rainbow.

There must be another effect in addition to light being dispersed into color in the rain drop.

How can the light get redirected into my eyes?

http://pierian.com/correlation/georgia/science/scientific_inquiryk-5.htm

Resource:

National Science Education Standards. (1996). Washington, D.C. National Academy Press.