Framing inquiry in high school chemistry: helping students see the bigger picture

• Autores: Brett Criswell
• Localización: Journal of chemical education, ISSN 0021-9584, Vol. 89, Nº 2, 2012, págs. 199-205
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Inquiry has been advocated as an effective pedagogical strategy for promoting deep conceptual understanding and more sophisticated scientific thinking by numerous bodies associated with chemistry (and science) education. To allow inquiry to achieve these goals, the teacher must manage the amount of cognitive load experienced by students while they engage in inquiry activities. This article can help teachers address that challenge by discussing the notion of framing (a form of scaffolding) and by presenting a model designed to help teachers more effectively frame inquiry activities. Using the metaphor of a picture frame, the model introduces five components of the framing process that can be employed by teachers as guidelines for developing the background information they will share with students prior to an inquiry activity. Those components are context, goals, actions, tools, and interactions. Providing students with such a carefully developed background can better orient them to the purpose of the inquiry activity, put boundaries on the problem space they will be exploring, and reduce the cognitive load as they engage in the activity, all of which should improve the inquiry learning experience.