Dialogue and Linguistic scaffolds as tools to help students making investigable questions. Twelfth conference of EUROPEAN RESEARCHERS IN DIDACTICS OF BIOLOGY- ERIDOB 2018. Concepció Ferrés-Gurt, Jordi Domènech-Casal.
Inquiry-Based Science Education has been proposed as a methodologic strategy to deepen in the comprehension of scientific models, scientific argumentation and the nature of science. When getting into practice, in scholar inquiry activities, students usually depart from questions proposed by teachers and rarely make their own investigable questions. We performed two parallel experiences to promote students’ transition from non-investigable to investigable questions. Scaffolding strategies applied (guided dialogue and linguistic scaffolding) improved students’ abilities to pose investigable questions and design experiments. Our data show that students present remarkable difficulties to pose investigable questions and these difficulties can be overcome by appropriate scaffolding Main difficulties of students are: 1) their scholar concept of “research”, linked to information searches; 2) their lack of basic knowledge on the topic there are making questions about. Efforts to improve student’s abilities to initiate and conduct inquiry activities should take into account these two initial difficulties and propose some kind of specific scaffolding.
Presentation available:
[slideshare id=103862895&doc=presentacioneridob-180701181211]