[Catalist] Inquiry-based learning: Assessing students' science inquiry skills

[Roy Skinner]

Mike, many thanks for the time you spend searching articles that make us
more aware of the situation regarding STEM in Australia.

 

Poor results in Australia are hardly surprising considering the lack of
emphasis on investigative and inquiry skills within the curriculum. To show
value we must award marks.

In my opinion there are too many schools giving assignments where the kids
have to "Investigate" lasers or the production systems of biodiesel - which
simply involves paraphrasing an on-line article. These skills are Old-School
skills. 

Other "Investigations" involve set practical experiments where students e.g.
look at the effect of changing the length of a pendulum and finding 'g'. The
answer to these kinds of investigations can easily be found on the Internet
- or from the previous year's students.

 

When I was teaching in UK many years ago for A-level the students had a
3-hour practical exam worth a good % of the final mark where they were given
an original investigation that even the teacher hadn't seen. The equipment
list was sent to the school and the teacher had to prepare in advance 30-odd
sets for the exam and do the experiment themselves to supply the "expert"
results. The scripts were then sent off and marked by The Board. 

An example of one of the experiments I had to prepare involved using a
boiling tube full of sugar water to make a lens which focused an object and
investigate how the concentration of the sugar altered the focal length.
This is what I call a REAL investigation with the importance of thinking
skills shown by the marks awarded, instead of lip-service where a task is
added on to the real curricular focus of learning physics stuff.

 

I think in WA we are trying to get too much out of an exam having conceptual
tasks, comprehension tasks (worth 20% now!!) and data analysis tasks all
contained in one 3 hour exam.

A focus on problem-solving in the physics curriculum obviously pays off in
the production of innovative scientists and inventors - no one would argue
with this.

Bill Bryson (American) mentions in one of his books that about 30% of all
the world's inventions have come from Britain. Does this reflect their
emphasis on thinking skills in UK?

Way back in the 1970s King's College had an education department that
produced analytical tasks based on practical set-ups and data where students
had use analysis and evaluation skills (top Bloomian concepts). The UK
Government then use these tests in all schools and reported back on the
levels of competencies in each aspect. One a baseline had been established
then intervention was used to improve upon teaching methods and curricular
design.

 

Curriculum designers here need to consider these things in the structure of
the required tasks and the exam.

Roy

 

From: Catalist [mailto:catalist-bounces at lists.stawa.net] On Behalf Of
Michael McGarry
Sent: Thursday, 30 November 2017 8:58 AM
To: catalist at lists.stawa.net
Subject: [Catalist] Inquiry-based learning: Assessing students' science
inquiry skills

 

Greetings Science Colleagues,

 

ACER URL 1:
https://rd.acer.org/article/inquiry-based-learning-assessing-students-scienc
e-inquiry-skills

 

ACER URL 2: https://ibt.acer.org

 

ACER URL 2 shows that ACER IBT Science Practice Tests are not currently
available for purchase by schools.

 

Have any colleagues used ACER IBT Science Tests in their Schools? Are the
ACER IBT Science Tests a good educational investment?

 

Thanks and Best Wishes,

 

Michael John McGarry

 



---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.stawa.net/pipermail/catalist_lists.stawa.net/attachments/20171130/62e7f4a7/attachment.html>