role of teacher stance when infusing inquiry questioning into middle school science classrooms, The

School Science and Mathematics, Mar 2001 by MacKenzie, Ann Haley

The purpose of this study was to describe how a teacher's stance of wonder, curiosity, and exploration during the use of hypothetical inquiry situations served as a way for the teacher to address her goals for students to be more vocal members of the learning community; to encourage critical and creative thinking in the students; to provide them with meaningful, context-rich opportunities for synthesizing personal past experience with ongoing classroom instruction; to enhance socialization skills in the middle school environment; and to provide an improvisational atmosphere for both learning and teaching.

* Was Halley's comet going to be around in 2000 years?

* If the sun were to become a supernova, would the Earth be destroyed immediately or would it take a while for the Earth to be destroyed?

* You need to pretend that the technology has advanced so far that you can visit each of the planets. You'll have to tell me what you found... what things you have to take with you to survive..You will have to use your imagination to figure out how to land on each planet.

These questions set the stage for wonder, curiosity, and inquisitiveness in a science classroom. After all, a science classroom should mirror the scientific community, with inquiry, questioning, and uncovering the mysteries of the natural world at the forefront. Often, science classrooms have been the antithesis. They have been places of rote memorization, didactic teaching practices, and predictable laboratory experiences in which knowledge was "unequivocal, unquestioned and uncontested" (Claxton, 1991). Constructivism requires that knowledge "be constructed by the mental activity of the learners" (Driver, Asoko, Leach, Mortimer, & Scott, 1994, p. 5). Teaching practice must mediate scientific knowledge for learners so they can make meaning of the material in a way that represents the scientific stance of wonder, problem solving, and questioning.

Driver, Newton, and Osborne (2000) argued that current classroom practices give little opportunity for young people to develop their ability to construct arguments, primarily due to a lack of opportunity for such activities within current pedagogical practices. They suggested that "ways will have to be found to organize lessons so that students themselves participate actively in thinking through issues and developing their own arguments" (p. 308). Infusing wonder into the tasks of the science classroom requires teachers to see their students as members of the scientific community, where "not knowing" is valued; where questions are framed for oneself to answer; where contradictions in one's argument is detected; and where the virtues of "accepting surprise, puzzlement, excitement, patience, caution, honest attempts and wrong outcomes are legitimate" and important members of the ecology of the science classroom (Duckworth, 1987).

The attempt to deconstruct the positivist myth in science classrooms and develop pedagogies that recast the classroom as communities of scientists engaging in purposeful, meaningful intellectual musings involves complex interactional patterns. Reform efforts in science education support this social constructivist view (National Research Council, 1996). One ofthe primary goals for school science is to "educate students who are able to experience the richness and excitement of knowing about and understanding the natural world and to engage intelligently in public discourse and debate about matters of scientific and technological concerns" (NRC, 1996, p. 13). In offering students a greater voice in the classroom, teachers may have to assist their students in moving from knowledge as absolute to knowledge as contextualized (Windschitl, 1999). Baxter Magolda (1992) suggested that learning must be defined as the mutual construction of meaning by a community of learners; that each student must be validated as a knower or viewed as a person capable of knowing; and situating the learning in students' experience helps them make this transition to a constructivist approach. Throughout the literature, there is a call for changes in teaching practices that embody constructivist notions, yet portraiture of this kind of teaching is missing and is sorely needed in order for educators to understand what this kind of teaching looks like in a real classroom.

Inquiry surfaces within group talk, as Oakeschott (1962) described by characterizing discussion as an "unrehearsed intellectual adventure" (p. 198). In a discussion environment guided by questioning, ideas, and theories, individual student voices make meaning, construct a worldview, and provide a "meeting place of various modes of imagining" (p. 206). A good discussion is one that leaves open issues for further inquiry, and exploration, and generates more questions to be uncovered (Brookfeld & Preskell, 1999). Inquiry as a basic teaching strategy in which students were involved in hands-on activities is not enough. Inquiry involves inquisitiveness. Students need to learn how to question phenomena, that is, to engage in the material world through dialogue. Inquiry motivates students when a puzzle confronts them, and they must take risks to try and solve it (Minstrell & van Zee, 2000). Minstrell stated, "We need to encourage and support personal curiosity when it occurs spontaneously and stimulate it when it doesn't occur naturally" (p. 472). Through questioning, discussion, and inquiry, positivist science classrooms can be transformed into places where meaning making engages students in active learning.