The slime trails of snails lead the author's students to a better understanding of science as inquiry and the processes of science. During this five-day activity, students get up close and personal with one of her favorite creatures, the land snail. Students begin by observing the organism and recording their observations. After making initial…

"Inquiry is an investigative process that engages students in answering questions, solving real world problems, confronting issues, or exploring personal interests" (Pappas and Tepe 2002, 27). Students who engage in inquiry learning need tools and resources that enable them to independently gather and use information. Scaffolding is important for…

Inquiry is an important learning strategy, even for students who cannot or do not perform actual experiments. We describe two activities, other than experimentation, that we used in introductory biology learning groups to emphasize inquiry abilities. We also provide recommendations for creating additional inquiry activities. (Contains 1 table and…

This framework identifies the main ideas, major events, key individuals, and unifying themes of American history as a basis for preparing the 2010 assessment. The framework recognizes that U.S. history includes powerful ideas, common and diverse traditions, economic developments, technological and scientific innovations, philosophical debates,…

This book shares the lessons learned by a large community of educational researchers and science teachers as they designed, developed, and investigated a new technology-enhanced learning environment known as WISE: The Web-Based Inquiry Science Environment. WISE offers a collection of free, customizable curriculum projects on topics central to the…

The conversation between myself and Professor Lederman took place in Malmö, Sweden on August 25, 2007. The purpose of the conversation was to elaborate on the past, present and future of nature of science research and also to provide insights for beginning researchers. In this text I am providing the questions about which we talked and my…

Despite the growing consensus regarding the value of inquiry based teaching and learning, the implementation of such practices continues to be a challenge. The goal of this paper is to present a model for the educational infrastructure that can support the implementation of the Biomind program, which is a new open inquiry program for Israeli…

Power Teaching weaves four factors into a seamless whole: standards, teaching thinking, research based strategies, and critical inquiry. As a prototype in its first year of development with an urban fifth grade class, the power teaching model connects selected district standards, thinking routines from Harvard University Project Zero Research…

The laboratory-learning environment needs to become more exploratory and undergo a transformation from its traditional confirmatory role in the learning of science. This is necessary to effectively allow students to achieve scientific literacy. The availability of powerful tools for data collection and analysis provides an opportunity for students…

Practice-as-inquiry refers to the blending of instructional practice with systematic curricular inquiry. College and university teachers, while experts in their disciplines, typically are not specialists in instructional practice. Practice-as-inquiry (also referred to as teacher-as-researcher) may function as a mechanism of continuous teaching…

The MicroObservatory network of five online telescopes has been used by middle and high school students, their teachers, and the public in all 50 states to carry out a wide variety of inquiry-driven projects. From an analysis of 475 student projects and other data, we report substantial gains in students' conceptual understanding of what…

The authors describe the premises, processes used, and outcomes of a K-16 simultaneous renewal model, as implemented through the Kansas State University Professional Development School Partnership Project. The goal of this partnership is to improve K-12 teaching and learning while improving a university teacher-preparation program through…

The expansion of the No Child Left Behind Act to include science standards and assessments is likely to refocus states' attention on science teaching and learning. Requiring teachers to have subject majors and greater funding of professional development are two key policy levers for improving instruction in science. There has been relatively…

A pre-service science and mathematics teacher participated in an action research project to reform a chemistry course required of elementary and middle childhood pre-service teachers. Activities to emphasize a hands-on approach to learning chemistry and to model teaching science through inquiry for these pre-service teachers are described. The…

This is the report of a qualitative emergent-design study of 2 different Web-enhanced science methods courses for preservice elementary teachers in which an experiential learning strategy, labeled "using yourself as a learning laboratory," was implemented. Emergent grounded theory indicated this strategy, when embedded in a course organized as an…