LEARNING SCIENCE THE INQUIRY WAY

JOHN S. EVIOTA

Every time I ask my students, what is their favorite subject; the answer would always be expected. Most of them will say English is their favorite subject because they love reciting poems or dramatizing the short stories taught to them by their teacher, some would say they love Music, Arts and Physical Education simply because they love the off classroom activities and only few of them would say Science is there favorite subject for the reason that they have a funny teacher or the lessons are interesting and relatable while others would say it’s a boring subject that requires memorization of many scientific terms and concepts.

This notion has been planted to many students and creates difficulties to the science teachers in coming up to a more appealing and interesting scientific discussion. Study shows that the problem could be back tract to the teaching strategy and teaching styles of the science educators. For the past centuries, Science is infamously taught through a traditional manner, in a chalk and black board setup where most of the time, the teacher keeps on talking while the students has nothing to do but to listen.

That is where we can draw the clue, why students are so disinterested in science class. They get fed up because they are not involved in the learning process. Over the years, science educators does not stop in discovering the a compatible strategy in teaching Science and one of the most talk about teaching strategy is the Inquiry-Based Learning and Instruction.

A Chinese proverb states that: “Tell me, I’ll forget. Show me, I’ll remember. Involve me, I’ll understand”. This quote is one of the theoretical foundations of Inquiry-Based Teaching and Learning. This teaching approach follows the 7E’s Learning Cycle namely Elicit, Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, Extend and Evaluate. This learning model is widely used in North America, Europe and some countries in Asia.

The 7E’s Model flows in this chronological order; the first E is Elicit. On this part of the teaching and learning process, the teacher will extract or draw attention to the prior or existing knowledge of the students through asking questions or sharing of concepts in front of the class. This is an opportunity for the teacher to know how much information the students already have for the upcoming topic.

The second E is Engage. This is part of the process where the teacher will present an Open-ended questions or facilitate an activity that will caught the students attention so they can focus in learning the topic. This is also the time, in which the teacher can present the main topic to be tackled, learning goals for the discussion (The skills and competencies the students must acquire), and activities to be done for the day. After knowing the targets of the lessons and the topic to be tackled, the students are now ready for the third E, Explore! On this part of the teaching and learning process, the students can be guided or have them draw their own data gathering technique in exploring the answers for the questions given onset of the laboratory activity.

The students are given the chance to observe, gather data, isolate variables, arrange the findings and create conclusions. The teacher will check the students’understanding from time to time to make sure that they are heading to the right path of class discussion. Since the students were able to conduct an exploration, they are now going to report their findings through video presentations, narrations or through essay writing that leads us to theforth E of the process, Explain.

This is the best time for the teachers to check if the students were able to collect justified amount of knowledge during laboratory activity. This is also an opportunity to clear out vague concepts and make corrections about the misconceptions of a particular topic. The fifth and sixth E of the process can be done interchangeably or together at once. Elaborate and Extend. This is considered to the transfer of learning.

The students and teachers can collaborate in integrating the knowledge they have learned to the other subject or connect it to other concept. That is where elaboration comes in. The can also apply what they have learned through product development and community involvements. It is the extend part of the Inquiry-Based learning.

I considered it as the best part of this teaching strategy. This is a chance for the students to apply and convert their knowledge into a valuable action. Learning must not end in a pen and paper assessment. The students will certainly appreciate the knowledge they acquired if they are able to relate it from tangible to intangible accomplishments. The last E of the Inquiry-Based Teaching and Learning process is Evaluation.

This part of the process can be integrated in all other E’s of Inquiry-Based. This is in the form of formative, summative, formal or informal assessments. It is the only way for us to know the degree of learnings that our students were able to acquire.

If you observed, the teacher has a minimal task in the entire teaching and learning process through Inquiry-Based. The teacher acts as a facilitator and all other activities are done by the students. Their involvement and participation is highly required in an Inquiry-Based class discussion. Science can be more fun as long as they are involved in the learning development. It may be difficult at times but it’s all worth in teaching. If all teachers are able to put this teaching strategy into practice, undoubtedly we will be able to produced great medical professionals, engineers and scientists. Our country would be as progressive as all other nations in the world. Through this pedagogy, science will not be a boring subject anymore. Nothing is impossible in learning science through inquiry. — oOo— The authr is Science Teacher at Dona Asuncion Lee Integrated School