CAREER: Exploring Authentic Inquiry: Factors that Influence Students

University Of Massachusetts Boston, Dorchester MA

Investigators

Abstract

This proposal is a five-year plan of research and instructional development investigating undergraduate biology students' learning of the process of science through an inquiry-based lab exercise. Understanding the process by which scientific knowledge is generated is an essential part of many science curriculum standards and frameworks. Most standards and frameworks for science education emphasize that students need to engage in scientific inquiry themselves in order to understand the process of science. In order to apply these standards in the classroom, it is necessary to have answers to the following questions: 1) Process: Can undergraduate students perform scientific inquiry in a teaching laboratory? 2) Outcome: To what extent does perfroming a scientific inquiry exercise help students to understand the process of science? 3) Important Features: How do variations in the activity affect the students's learning of the process science? This project will build on previous work to explore answers to these questions in the context of a technically simple but educationally rich lab exercise, the Red and White Yeast Lab. The Red and White Lab is based on an engineered strain of baker's yeast. When this strain is spread on a petri plate, it produces a patch with a red center and a white edge. Students are given fresh plates and sterile toothpicks; their assisgnment is to use these tools to account for why the center is red and the edge white. During this lab, the students make their own hypotheses and models, design their own experiements based on variables that they define, and interpret their own date. They argue about date and the interpretation of data and use these arguments to refine their experiments. In this experimental environment, the students are be free to contruct knowledge in a manner that shares many epistemological features with authentic scientific investigation. The PI has used and developed this lab for the past 5 years with introductory-level biology students. A description of this lab will be published this fall and this lab will be disseminated as part of the NSF-Funded ResearchLink 2000 project. The PI's teaching responsibilities in the Biology department include teaching the two semester General Biology series, TA training, and acting as an education resource in the Biology department. The Red and White Yeast Lab is the first lab in the first semester course in this series. The findings of this study will inform the development of the lecture, lab, and TA training as taught by the PI and will be distributed internationally. The project will analyze classroom videotape and interviews to analyze the process and outcome of the lab in terms of these four issues: (a) What is the nature of scientific 'proof'? (b) How do hypotheses and experimental data interact? (c) How do scientists respond to anomalous data? (d) How are conflicts of ideas resolved in the scientific community? The five studies that compose this project are based on the three above; all three questions will be addressed in different contexts in each of the five studies. The studies will begin by developing measures of process and outcome. They will also examine the coupling between process (what the students do) and outcome (what they learn from what they did). The remaining studies will focus on the effects of manipulations of the lab exercise on students' process and outcome. These manipulations will involve key features of authentic experimentation: choosing experiemental questions and variables; designing experiments; revising techniques; and using multiple experiemtal methods. The findings of the studies presented in this proposal will contribute to the understanding of scientific reasoning in undergraduate students as well as and to an understanding of the design and evaluation of inquiry-based laboratory exercises. As an exemplar of these principles and practices, this project will produce a throughly-tested laboratory exercise and accompanying teacher training materials designed to communicate an understanding of the process of science.