PARENT SESSION
Oral Session # 18: Ecology Education I: K - 12.
Presiding: J Hanowski
Tuesday, August 5. 8:00 AM to 11:30 AM, SITCC Meeting Room 104.

An ecological example of incorporating inquiry into non-laboratory classrooms: Exploring organisms.

Lehman, Elizabeth¹, Love, Alan¹, Ingram, Ella^*,1, Myer Polacek, Kelly¹, ¹ Indiana University - Bloomington, Bloomington, IN

ABSTRACT- Inquiry approaches to teaching science are well established as effective techniques to engage students in the process of science and increase student learning. We most often think of inquiry as typical of laboratory classroom setting, although inquiry approaches are not limited to this context. We describe methods of incorporating inquiry into non-laboratory classrooms, using an ecology activity as an example. We focused our activity on having students ask and evaluate questions. We observed class meetings when the activity was scheduled and when a non-inquiry activity was scheduled, and recorded classroom dynamics using a tool designed to assess inquiry-focused behaviors. During the inquiry activity, we observed a greater diversity of student behaviors in the classroom as compared to the non-inquiry activity. Also, we observed more inquiry-appropriate behaviors of the instructor and an increase in students practicing inquiry skills during the activity. The two most dramatic differences between inquiry-based and non-inquiry-based class meetings were 1) students passively listening to the instructor half as frequently during the inquiry activity, and 2) students asking each other questions eight times more frequently during the inquiry activity. The major lesson learned from the assessment of this activity is that students can successfully practice inquiry in a non-laboratory classroom. We describe refinements of the presented teaching activity and summarize strategies for incorporating inquiry into discussion sections or learning groups.

Key words: education, inquiry, alternatives