The Development of Cognitive Skills To Support Inquiry Learning

Abstract

Establishing the value of inquiry learning as an educational method, it is argued, rests on thorough, detailed knowledge of the cognitive skills it is intended to promote. Mental models, as representations of the reality being investigated in inquiry learning, stand to influence strategies applied to the task. In the research described here, the hypothesis is investigated that students at the middle school level, and sometimes well beyond, may have an incorrect mental model of multivariable causality (one in which effects of individual features on an outcome are neither consistent nor additive) that impedes the causal analysis involved in most forms of inquiry learning. An extended intervention with 6th to 8th graders was targeted to promote (a) at the metalevel, a correct mental model based on additive effects of individual features (indicated by identification of effects of individual features as the task objective); (b) also at the metalevel, metastrategic understanding of the need to control the influences of other features; and (c) at the performance level, consistent use of the controlled comparison strategy. Both metalevel advancements were observed, in addition to transfer to a new task at the performance level, among many (though not all) students. Findings support the claim that a developmental hierarchy of skills and understanding underlies, and should be identified as an objective of, inquiry learning.

Taking Nothing for Granted in Management Education: A Systemic Perspective on the Role of Reflective Questioning

“…Moreover, team dialogue and group reflection practices tend to be more productive than learning alone, particularly in the face of ill-structured learning issues and problems (e.g., Kuhn & Lao, 1998;Kuhn et al, 2002;Mintzberg & Gosling, 2009;Jacobs & Coghlan, 2005;Roglio & Light, 2009). In this respect, engaging in critical reflection on a purely individual basis, for example by writing a personal diary, does help make sense of experiences and provides ideas about how to deal with the more negative ones (cf.…”

Support of the collaborative inquiry learning process: influence of support on task and team regulation

“…In collaborative inquiry learning, students work together in a learning environment doing experiments and using the results for shared knowledge construction (De Jong 2006;Kuhn et al 2000;Saab et al 2005). Computer simulations can be used to execute these experiments in a safe and easily accessible environment (Njoo and De Jong 1993;Njoo 1994;De Jong and Van Joolingen 1998).…”

“…Inquiry learning processes include orientation, generating hypotheses, testing these hypotheses and drawing conclusions (Kuhn et al 2000). De Jong and Njoo (1992) label these processes as transformative processes, which can lead to the generation of knowledge and new information.…”

The Emergence of Scientific Reasoning

“…Kuhn and her colleagues have incorporated the use of specific practice opportunities and prompts to help children develop these types of competencies. For example, Kuhn, Black, Keselman, and Kaplan (2000) incorporated performance-level practice and metastrategic-level practice for sixth-to eighthgrade students. Performance-level exercise consisted of standard exploration of the task environment, whereas metalevel practice consisted of scenarios in which two individuals disagreed about the effect of a particular feature in a multivariable situation.…”