Inquiry Unpacked

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Inquiry Unpacked
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Inquiry Unpacked

• What does inquiry look like in the classroom?
• Why would one do inquiry?
• Whats so hard about inquiry-oriented teaching?

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1. What Does Inquiry Look Like?

• Open Inquiry
• Hubble, Science Fairs, etc.
• Structured/Guided Inquiry
• Lets Make Craters

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Lets Make Some Craters!

• Part I Free Exploration with flour only use
  rocks less than 2 across and dont make a
  mess!!
• Part II Add a thin layer of regolith (dust) to
  help you see the details. If your moons surface
  gets dirty, switch to adding a thin layer of
  WHITE regolith over the top.
• Part III Write a procedure to conduct the
  following
• Experiment 1 Does speed matter (dont throw
  it!)
• Experiment 2 What happens if you change what
  lands?
• Experiment 3 Does mass matter? (nothing larger
  than 2 in size)
• Experiment 4 Does volume/diameter matter?

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1. What Does Inquiry Look Like?

• Open Inquiry
• Hubble, Science Fairs, etc.
• Structured/Guided Inquiry
• Lets Make Craters
• Backwards Faded Scaffolding in Inquiry
• Galilean Moons, Galaxy Zoo
• Collaborative Inquiry
• Tracking Sunspots

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Tracking SunspotsLearning about the Sun using
real SOHO data
Adapted from an activity at sohowww.nascom.nasa.
gov/classroom/docs/Spotexerweb.pdf.
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If sunspots move, can we tell how fast the sun is
spinning?

• What kind of data could we collect to answer the
  question?
• How much data should we collect?
• What will we do with the data once we have it?

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In your classroom, a pair of students working on
sunspot C might make a grid that looks like this.
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Sample data recorded (numbers are approximate)

• Group A B C
• June 22 -60 -- -60
• June 23 -45 -58 -45
• June 24 -30 -30 -33
• June 25 -18 -23 -20
• June 26 -12 -12 -13
• June 27 8 -7 4
• June 28 23 5 17
• June 29 33 17 30
• June 30 43 23 38
• July 01 55 42 53
• July 02 65 56 --
• July 03 -- 70 --

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Analysis Cleaning Up the Data

• Review your data to make sure that the numeric
  data matches the graphic data
• Determine how many degrees of longitude your
  sunspot moves PER DAY?
• Special information Since Earth is orbiting
  around the Sun, at about one degree per day, your
  sunspot is actually moving about one more degree
  per day that it seems to. Add one degree/day to
  your calculation.
• Determine How long does it take the sun to
  rotate USING YOUR DATA?

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Thinking About Data Analysis

• Were the spots always the same?
• Does everyone have the same answer?
• What do we do when the answers arent the same?
• When is it fair to average the data? And when
  is it fair to throw out the outliers?

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1. What Does Inquiry Look Like?

• Open Inquiry
• Hubble, Science Fairs, etc.
• Structured/Guided Inquiry
• Lets Make Craters
• Backwards Faded Scaffolding in Inquiry
• Galilean Moons, Galaxy Zoo
• Collaborative Inquiry
• Tracking Sunspots
• Jigsawing
• Telescope Time Proposals

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Jigsawing with Paul Francis
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Paul says

• In these exercises, I divided my class into
  small teams typically of three students). Each
  team is then given a briefing paper, describing
  some facet of a particular astronomical mystery.
• The teams have to wander around the classroom,
  exchanging information with other groups, until
  they can piece together a complete solution to
  the astronomical mystery.
• They can then present their solution and win a
  prize.
• The exercises have been run successfully in
  classes as large as 150 students, and as small as
  12 students. I see no reason why they should no
  work equally well in larger classes still. They
  have been run with students as young as Year 10,
  and as old as grad students.

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Planet Traxoline

• Each member of your group will received data from
  Planet Traxoline.
• This data was retrieved by probes and remote
  controlled robots.
• They took rock samples for chemistry and
  temperature, and images of topography .
• Fossils were also found
• You must analyze your own data, share your
  observations with your group, and report at the
  ExtraPlanetary Institute meeting.
• If you can create a report that makes meaning out
  of ALL of the data, you win the Spock Prize!

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1. What Does Inquiry Look Like?

• Open Inquiry
• Hubble, Science Fairs, etc.
• Structured/Guided Inquiry
• Lets Make Craters
• Backwards Faded Scaffolding in Inquiry
• Galilean Moons, Galaxy Zoo
• Collaborative Inquiry
• Tracking Sunspots
• Jigsawing
• Telescope Time Proposals
• So is everything Inquiry?

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Lets take a look at three Astro classes..

• What do you see?
• Is it inquiry?

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Lets imagine some ASTRO 101 courses
Celestial College Betelgeuse College Arcturus College

What is the teaching model/formula in each class?
Compare what happens first, second, etc
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Lets imagine some ASTRO 101 courses
Celestial College Betelgeuse College Arcturus College
Professor provides flow charts showing evolution pathways for low-, medium-, and high-mass stars asks students to copy them into their notes gives students a test that includes matching items and short answer questions.
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Lets imagine some ASTRO 101 courses
Celestial College Betelgeuse College Arcturus College
Professor provides flow charts showing evolution pathways for low-, medium-, and high-mass stars asks students to copy them into their notes gives students a test that includes matching items and short answer questions. Professor gives the luminosity and spectral class of 10 nearby stars, distant stars, bright cool stars students plot the stars on a HR diagram trace evolution of stars with varying starting points. Students complete a quiz on the HR diagram.
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Lets imagine some ASTRO 101 courses
Celestial College Betelgeuse College Arcturus College
Professor provides flow charts showing evolution pathways for low-, medium-, and high-mass stars asks students to copy them into their notes gives students a test that includes matching items and short answer questions. Professor gives the luminosity and spectral class of 10 nearby stars, distant stars, bright cool stars students plot the stars on a HR diagram trace evolution of stars with varying starting points. Students complete a quiz on the HR diagram. Professor proposes to students that all stars in the sky are alike asks students to organize information on bright and nearby stars from their texts appendix to support or disprove the proposition. helps students notice stellar characteristics patterns, guides them to use vocabulary. assesses based on the completeness observations and patterns identified in journals.
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Lets imagine some ASTRO 101 courses
Celestial College Betelgeuse College Arcturus College
Professor provides flow charts showing evolution pathways for low-, medium-, and high-mass stars asks students to copy them into their notes gives students a test that includes matching items and short answer questions. Professor gives the luminosity and spectral class of 10 nearby stars, distant stars, bright cool stars students plot the stars on a HR diagram trace evolution of stars with varying starting points. Students complete a quiz on the HR diagram. Professor proposes to students that all stars in the sky are alike asks students to organize information on bright and nearby stars from their texts appendix to support or disprove the proposition. helps students notice stellar characteristics patterns, guides them to use vocabulary. assesses based on the completeness observations and patterns identified in journals.
What is the teaching model/formula in each class?
Compare what happens first, second, etc
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Discussion Questions

1. What are the steps in each?
2. How long does each take?
3. Which would be the most fun to be a student in?
4. Which class would you rather teach in?

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Discussion Questions continued

• Which is consistent with the nature of science?
• Which are teacher-centered, student-centered,
  hands-on, and inquiry?
• Inquiry is.
• Engaging with meaningful questions
• Using data as evidence
• Communicating/critiquing conclusions
• Which is teaching for understanding?

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2. Why would one do inquiry?Inquiry and How
People Learn

• What do we know about cognition the ways that
  people perceive, remember and process
  information?
• Prior knowledge (Erlwanger, Au, Moll)
• Metacognition (Flavell, Brown)
• Social construction of knowledge (Vygotsky,
  Piaget, Bruner)
• Meaningful Formative Assessment (Cowie Bell,
  Black William)
• Active engagement (Bonwell Eison, Redish)
• What aspects of inquiry instruction match what we
  know about cognition?

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3. Whats so hard about inquiry-oriented
teaching?Inquiry is not a natural act, as
practitioner or instructor.

• We have misconceptions about inquiry
• There are practical classroom issues
• Asking a good research question is really hard

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Remember your list of inquiry experiences and
conceptions?Some Misconceptions about Inquiry

• Research book report
• Rejecting a hypothesis is bad
• Science requires lab equipment/lots of funding
• Inquiry requires data-collection (on-line data
  doesnt count)
• There is a set linear method of scientific
  inquiry
• (Inquiry is experimental, with controls,
  variables hypotheses)
• Generating scientific questions is the easy part
  analyzing data is the hard part

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Typical instructor and student concerns
(complaints). Yes, we mean you.

• Takes too much time
• I have too many students
• My students have too low an aptitude
• This kind of instruction hurts smart students
• Cant you just Google the answer?
• Content is watered down
• It is difficult
• There is no answer key
• They might ask a question that I cant answer!
• What if my hypothesis isnt right ?!?

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Asking a good research question is really hard!

• Remember asking research questions with Gemini
  and Hubble? Which set of questions was easier?
• Why?
• What does this imply about teaching people the
  art of doing research?
• Lets try again

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How Much Do Natural Systems Change Over Time?

• Hours of Daylight
• Percentage of Surface Covered by Snow/Ice?
• Temperature
• Pollution
• CO2
• Ozone (03)
• Cloud Cover

• Plant Coverage
• Rainfall
• Wind Patterns
• River Water Discharge
• Earthquakes
• Population (Humans or other organisms)
• Others?

You have to do a SCIENCE FAIR PROJECT!!! What is
your research question?
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II. Data, Data Everywhere, But Not a Dot to Plot

• River Levels
• http//water.usgs.gov/waterwatch/
• Wind Patterns
• River Water Levels or Volume
• Lightning
• http//thunder.nsstc.nasa.gov/lightning-cgi-bin/li
  s/LISSearch.pl?typeHTML?
• Earthquakes
• http//earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/
• Volcanoes
• http//volcanoes.usgs.gov/update.html
• Human Population
• http//www.census.gov/
• Traffic Congestion
• http//www.stolasgeospatial.com/traffic.html
• Sea Level Rising from Global Warming
• http//flood.firetree.net/
• NASA Images from Space
• http//earth.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/efs/categories.htm
  
• Great Meta Collection of Real-Time Weather Data

• Hours of Daylight
• http//aa.usno.navy.mil/data/
• Rain, Snow, Temperature, Wind, Pressure
• http//www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/mppsearch.html
• Percentage of Surface Covered by Snow/Ice
• http//gis.ncdc.noaa.gov/website/ims-climatls/inde
  x.html or
• Browse at http//nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0046.html
• Archive at http//www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/SNOW/
• Or http//www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ussc/pagemap.html
• Temperature
• http//www.temperatureworld.com/ or
• http//gis.ncdc.noaa.gov/website/ims-climatls/inde
  x.html and you can draw boxes to zoon
• Pollution
• Map Archives at http//airnow.gov/
• CO2
• http//www.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccgg/iadv/
• Ozone (03)
• http//www.ozonelayer.noaa.gov/data/data.htm
• Cloud Cover

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All Research Questions Are Not Created Equal

• Consider these questions inquiry proposed by
  studentsdo you think they would be fruitful and
  productive things to investigate as a scientific
  inquiry? Why or why not? How could they be
  improved?
• How many days in a year?
• How many hummingbird species feed near the
  school?
• How does the pH of the school yard soil change
  over a month?
• Which plants look different the day after it
  rains?
• Are the number of acres burned by wildfire each
  year increasing?
• Does it rain the same number of days in July
  every year?
• Is the amount of plankton in the ocean related to
  the fluctuating sea surface temperature?
• Are there more car accidents in Tucson during the
  full moon?
• In general, what do you think makes a lousy
  inquiry question?
• In general, what do you think makes a great
  inquiry question?

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What is the essence of a good research
question?Noone knows..

• At first, its easier to spot a bad question
• A theoretical. Doesnt connect to preexisting
  knowledge
• Who cares? What would you do with the answer
  if you could find it?
• Duh! The answer to the question is obvious.
• Black box. Input.outputdont know what
  happened.

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Resources

• Colburn, A.- What Teacher Educators Need to Know
  about Inquiry-Based Instruction
• http//www.csulb.edu/acolburn/AETS.htm