Beyond the scientific method: Model‐based inquiry as a new paradigm of preference for school science investigations

Abstract

ABSTRACT:One hundred years after its conception, the scientific method continues to reinforce a kind of cultural lore about what it means to participate in inquiry. As commonly implemented in venues ranging from middle school classrooms to undergraduate laboratories, it emphasizes the testing of predictions rather than ideas, focuses learners on material activity at the expense of deep subject matter understanding, and lacks epistemic framing relevant to the discipline. While critiques of the scientific method are not new, its cumulative effects on learners' conceptions of science have not been clearly articulated. We discuss these effects using findings from a series of five studies with degree-holding graduates of our educational system who were preparing to enter the teaching profession and apprentice their own young learners into unproblematic images of how science is done. We then offer an alternative vision for investigative science-model-based inquiry (MBI)-as a system of activity and discourse that engages learners more deeply with content and embodies five epistemic characteristics of scientific knowledge: that ideas represented in the form of models are testable, revisable, explanatory, conjectural, and generative. We represent MBI as an interconnected set of classroom conversations and provide examples of its implementation and its limitations.

Developing preservice elementary teachers' knowledge and practices through modeling‐centered scientific inquiry

“…As such, modeling-centered inquiry may be able to help preservice teachers address some of the problems of practice that they face. Because of both the challenges and the affordances of modeling-centered inquiry pedagogy, beginning teachers need support to effectively engage their students in this practice (Crawford & Cullin, 2004;Justi & Gilbert, 2002;Schwarz & Gwekwerere, 2007;Windschitl & Thompson, 2006;Windschitl, Thompson, & Braaten, 2008).…”

Models as Relational Categories

“…Thus, models are used to generate hypotheses and explanations, as well as design experiments and gain understanding. Importantly, models are seen as parts of a larger explanatory framework, which provides the outline for the model construction-thus, models are seen as subordinated by theories (Hestenes 1992;Windschitl et al 2008). Also, models are typically evaluated by experimentation and subsequently revised (see, e.g., Hestenes 1992).…”

“…Jonassen et al (2005) argued that while, for example, intelligent tutoring systems and microworlds allow learners to interact with them, they are used only for infer the propositions built in the systems and for confirming hypotheses. 6 In contrast, certain approaches take model construction as an explicit target for instruction (Halloun 2007;Hestenes 1992;Passmore et al 2009;Windschitl et al 2008). Often, modeling is embedded in inquiry activities, which relies on cyclical development and testing of models.…”

“…Then a model is constructed in order to generate hypotheses and/or predictions about experiments, whose purpose is to validate or test the model (Louca and Zacharia 2012). In model-based inquiry approaches, the structure of scientific knowledge is emphasized so as to underscore the models' role as parts of larger, more comprehensive frameworks (i.e., theories) (Windschitl et al 2008; see also, Passmore et al 2009). Indeed, Windschitl et al (2008) noted that too often naive discovery is employed wherein questions are often Barbitrary^and hypotheses Bpoorly informed quesses^(p. 946).…”

Designing for STEM Integration

“…As seen with the typical enactment of ''inquiry'' approaches in science classrooms (i.e., providing students with a question and methods for answering that question, asking students to collect and analyze the data as they draw pre-determined conclusions), this standardization can quickly become a script that students perform without understanding the purpose of the practices (Windschitl, Thompson & Braaten, 2008). That is, the artifacts can become pseudotransactional (Berland & Hammer, 2011;Spinuzzi, 1996) or a ''classroom game'' (Lemke, 1990), such that the work is completed in the service of a grade, rather than a communicative and sensemaking goal.…”