In any demonstration to students, producing light and sound usually ensures interest and can enhance understanding and retention of the concepts involved. A guided inquiry (Predict, Observe, Explain: POE) approach was used to involve the students actively in their learning about the explosive combustion of fine flour particles in air in the…

We have developed a two-week guided-inquiry laboratory in which first-semester general chemistry students investigate a suspected arson using gas chromatography--mass spectrometry and paper chromatography. In the process of evaluating evidence from the crime scene, students develop and test hypotheses and learn the fundamentals of chromatography,…

Questions are powerful tools that are central to scientific inquiry. Given the importance of investigable questions to scientific inquiry, what can teachers do to help students learn how to generate them? Possibilities the author explores in this article are (a) demonstrating to students that we value their questions, (b) providing students with…

One way to advance inquiry in the classroom is to establish a systematic strategy for reflecting on our practice and our students' readiness to engage in increasingly complex scientific reasoning. The Matrix for Assessing and Planning Scientific Inquiry (MAPSI) is a tool that promotes this valuable reflection so that we, as teachers, are better…

This paper reports on a strategy for exploring the life-centric practice of a lecturer in Higher Education. The initiative for this inquiry arose out of the realisation that there did not appear to be positive, heart-lifting stories in a lecturer's current teaching experiences. Using an appreciative eye and supported by a critical friend,…

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) poses significant challenges for teaching in the context of an undergraduate laboratory, foremost because of high equipment cost. Current off-the-shelf data-acquisition hardware, however, is sufficiently powerful to constitute the core of a fully digital NMR spectrometer operating at the earth's field. We present…

This article disseminates findings from a multi-year study regarding secondary preservice science teachers' perceptions toward inquiry-based science teaching, and the extent these perceptions are augmented by their practicum. While findings indicated that preservice teachers did improve their understanding and capability of using scientific…

Expanding upon previous theorizing of Art[middle dot]I/f/act[middle dot]ology published in "Qualitative Inquiry" in 2008, this article offers autoethnographic re:collections of a performance/paper presented at the international "Academic Identities in Crisis?" conference at the University of Central Lancashire, held in…

This article presents a commentary exchange between authors Laurie Grobman and Richard C. Raymond regarding Raymond's article "Re-placing Lit in Comp II: Pragmatic/Humanistic Benefits." Grobman said that in her brief commentary on Raymond's article, she chooses not to explicitly address his thesis that literature belongs in a research-based…

The authors have spent many years providing professional development in the area of science education, working alongside teachers and observing children in the classroom. These experiences have convinced them that activities involving inclined planes are possibly the best science activities they have ever encountered. They call their collection of…

"Prior knowledge" (sometimes called schema or background knowledge) is information one already knows that helps him/her make sense of new information. New learning builds on existing prior knowledge. In traditional reporting-style research projects, students bypass this crucial step and plow right into answer-finding. It's no wonder that many…

This article explores the role of teacher research as part of a robust program of professional development. Teacher research offers teachers at every stage of development a recursive and reflective means of bridging the gap between current practice and potential professional growth. The purpose of this dual level inquiry was to probe the concept…

In this article, we undertake three critical tasks: First, we delineate major shifts in feminist rhetorical inquiry, thus describing a new and changed landscape of the field. Second, we argue that as feminist rhetorical practices have shifted, so have standards of excellence. To articulate excellence in feminist rhetorical studies, we draw…

The consolidation of reconceptualism as a distinctive tradition in curriculum inquiry is commonly understood to go hand-in-hand with the decline and even eclipse of an explicit political orientation in such work. This paper offers an alternative argument, focusing on a re-assessment of what has been called the representation problem, and exploring…

Development of a research instrument to measure student achievement requires planning and reliability and validity testing before the instrument is used to collect data. These steps are often overlooked in research studies, but when the instrument is to be used across a wider population, the inclusion of these steps is vital to address the…