After discussing my research topic with Dr. McCoy, I think that I have reached a better place. I agree that I do need to take some time away from the EOC. It is a really big deal in my school especially now with the proficiency standard in Biology. But I’m letting it go. This seems to be the theme of my week!
My original interest to start with (even though I tied it to the EOCs) was how inquiry based learning in science specifically Biology effect student learning compared to traditional lecture methods. I think that I will focus more on impact of inquiry in Biology students’ achievement and teacher perceptions of the effectiveness of inquiry.
I think that my study will be more qualitative than I originally anticipated. I think that observations of teachers will give me a good idea of what inquiry methods they use as well as how these methods impact student learning. I personally am really excited to be able to observe other teachers in my field! Based on the observations, I will probably do follow up interview with teachers about their perspective of inquiry methods affects on student achievement as well as any “bumps” observed in class.
On the quantitative side (since I wasn’t at this point last week), I will definitely use a survey to gather information about inquiry from teachers – do they use inquiry methods, what type, in which classes, what problems they have had, how student achievement has been affected, etc. I also would potentially like to survey students to see if inquiry methods engage them more in science than traditional methods and if they learn more from inquiry. Scenario situations would be good here.
I am still more interested in standard students than honors students. It would be interesting to see if there is a discrepancy of inquiry use in between the two types of classes.
2 comments:
Leslie, In our resent email correspondence, I mentioned the following possible topics:
1. Using science inquiry with general biology students to promote conceptual change about evolution.
2. Factors that influence high school biology teachers decisions to use different inquiry instructional strategies.
In this posting you have mentioned many possibilities and i think we need to narrow this down to a manageable project. Some suggestions are
3. Obstacles encountered by teachers conducting science inquiry activities.
4. The degree to which different types of inquiry methods engage students
Leslie, I like your general topic of inquiry learning. I agree with JP that you need a clear focus. I like his suggestions....
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