The use of inquiry-based science teaching to promote students’ conceptual understanding of direct current electricity

Abstract

Research in science education evolved from the positivist paradigm in which scientific knowledge was considered to be immutable. This article investigates the use of inquiry-based science teaching as a pedagogical strategy to develop prospective science teachers’ conceptual understanding of direct current electricity. It is proposed that Vygotsky’s social constructivism and Dewey’s pragmatism have common elements that may serve as a philosophical framework for inquiry-based science teaching. An example of the transformative conjecture-driven teaching experiment as a design study in science education, is outlined. A retrospective analysis is provided to develop a learning environment that can contribute to better conceptual understanding of basic direct current electricity by prospective science teachers.

The Effectiveness of Evidence-Based Reasoning in Inquiry-Based Physics Teaching to Increase Students’ Scientific Reasoning

“…Inquiry-based teaching provides an opportunity to build insights into facts in the surrounding environment (Vlaardingerbroek, Taylor, Bale, & Kennedy, 2017). Constructivist perspective as the underlying philosophical framework of inquiry finds the prior knowledge and students' role as a discoverer to predict and explain physical phenomena/concepts (Buell, Greenstein, & Wilstein, 2017;Edwards & le Grange, 2017). Students are required to collect relevant information and use it as a basis for formulating hypotheses, analyzing data, and linking fact and concept that underlie the process of drawing conclusions and problem solution (Chen, Wang, Dede, & Grotzer, 2017;Erlina, Jatmiko, & Wicaksono, 2015;Pandiangan, Sanjaya, Gusti, & Jatmiko, 2017).…”