Introduction: The Journey to My Line of Inquiry
Discovering my inquiry question was certainly an ongoing journey. Student teaching provided me with a wealth of inquiries and challenges. These challenges forced me to question and reflect on what teaching and learning is and what it could be. Over the span of a few months I constantly explored these challenges in search of what I could do over the course of this year to promote student success. This means their academic success in my class as well as supporting their development in skills that will serve them to be successful well beyond this class, whether that is in higher education, a career, or a fruitful life as an adult. However, most importantly I want to build student skills to be life long learners because this will truly allow them to succeed. I had many thoughts about what I could do this and choosing one inquiry question was a difficult task. In order to understand my final inquiry question I will take you on my journey. The journey was a progression of ideas and approaches to teaching informed by my students and colleagues.
In this space I will lay out the foundation to my inquiry. I will introduce the critical concepts of the 5 key points of my inquiry exploration: Motivation, Enduring Understandings, Scientific Literacy, Metacognition, and Learning Objectives. Each of these points corresponds to a section in My Inquiry Journey. This link will serve as the road map to my inquiry journey. These points will be discussed in chronological order to provide an overview of what lead me to my final inquiry question. After I have provided the background information for each of these points, I will shift my attention to the analysis of my data and how it informed and supported the development of my inquiry. This, along with my data, will allow me to arrive at the culminating findings and future implications of my inquiry. Our first stop is student motivation.
1. Motivation
I quickly realized during the first few weeks of student teaching that many students were not motivated the same way I was as a learner, simply working hard to preform well on assessments. This led me to want to investigate how I could build skills, motivation, and encouragement that would benefit students and promote their success. Many of my students, particularly those who were lower preforming in the class, would ask questions along the lines of ‘When will I ever really use this?’ or exclaimed statements such as ‘There is no point in this.’ My responses would always fall back on how it would prepare them for some up coming assessment. Regardless of whether the assessment was in the near future, such as homework or a quiz, or long term, such as the Biology Keystone exam, I did not know how to effectively elaborate beyond this reasoning. I was not satisfied with this response because it clearly favored the type of learner I am and was not sufficient for the majority of my students. I needed to find a way to reach the students who were not motivated or were discouraged by assessments. I then asked myself; “How can I articulate to students, and myself, the significance of what the are learning daily?” This led to the next step in my journey.
2. Enduring Understandings
My answer to the question above was to explore the use enduring understandings. First I thought I could use them in my class to help guide myself, and my students, to comprehending the significance of what was learned daily. Enduring understandings would allow me to explain the importance of what students were learning beyond solely preparing them for upcoming assessments. It would also support students to think about learning science beyond simply memorizing discrete facts. Helping students realize the bigger, more long-term, picture of what they were learning I hoped it would positively influence their motivation and therefore success in the class.
As I began writing essential questions and enduring understandings, I came across the challenge of how to implement enduring understandings in a way that students could really interact with the bigger picture of learning science. The disconnect between short-term and long-term applications of what students were learning made me question what I thought science teaching and learning is. As Schwartz et. al. (2008) discussed in their research, covering a large breath of content may support students’ performance on standardized tests, a short-term application, yet with out depth of content students cannot effectively utilize the content long-term, such as in their post-secondary education. This conflict between breath, leading to more short-term understanding, and depth, leading to more long-term understanding, is long-lived in science education. Next I realized, I needed to find a way to support success for both students who were going to take advanced science courses in their future and those who would go no further than this class for formal science education. Therefore, I believe science teaching and learning should be about the content and building life long skills. Science teaching and learning should create a foundation of critical analysis and a questioning thought process that students can access throughout their lives. At this point, the enduring understanding of being a scientifically literate adult came to light.
In this space I will lay out the foundation to my inquiry. I will introduce the critical concepts of the 5 key points of my inquiry exploration: Motivation, Enduring Understandings, Scientific Literacy, Metacognition, and Learning Objectives. Each of these points corresponds to a section in My Inquiry Journey. This link will serve as the road map to my inquiry journey. These points will be discussed in chronological order to provide an overview of what lead me to my final inquiry question. After I have provided the background information for each of these points, I will shift my attention to the analysis of my data and how it informed and supported the development of my inquiry. This, along with my data, will allow me to arrive at the culminating findings and future implications of my inquiry. Our first stop is student motivation.
1. Motivation
I quickly realized during the first few weeks of student teaching that many students were not motivated the same way I was as a learner, simply working hard to preform well on assessments. This led me to want to investigate how I could build skills, motivation, and encouragement that would benefit students and promote their success. Many of my students, particularly those who were lower preforming in the class, would ask questions along the lines of ‘When will I ever really use this?’ or exclaimed statements such as ‘There is no point in this.’ My responses would always fall back on how it would prepare them for some up coming assessment. Regardless of whether the assessment was in the near future, such as homework or a quiz, or long term, such as the Biology Keystone exam, I did not know how to effectively elaborate beyond this reasoning. I was not satisfied with this response because it clearly favored the type of learner I am and was not sufficient for the majority of my students. I needed to find a way to reach the students who were not motivated or were discouraged by assessments. I then asked myself; “How can I articulate to students, and myself, the significance of what the are learning daily?” This led to the next step in my journey.
2. Enduring Understandings
My answer to the question above was to explore the use enduring understandings. First I thought I could use them in my class to help guide myself, and my students, to comprehending the significance of what was learned daily. Enduring understandings would allow me to explain the importance of what students were learning beyond solely preparing them for upcoming assessments. It would also support students to think about learning science beyond simply memorizing discrete facts. Helping students realize the bigger, more long-term, picture of what they were learning I hoped it would positively influence their motivation and therefore success in the class.
As I began writing essential questions and enduring understandings, I came across the challenge of how to implement enduring understandings in a way that students could really interact with the bigger picture of learning science. The disconnect between short-term and long-term applications of what students were learning made me question what I thought science teaching and learning is. As Schwartz et. al. (2008) discussed in their research, covering a large breath of content may support students’ performance on standardized tests, a short-term application, yet with out depth of content students cannot effectively utilize the content long-term, such as in their post-secondary education. This conflict between breath, leading to more short-term understanding, and depth, leading to more long-term understanding, is long-lived in science education. Next I realized, I needed to find a way to support success for both students who were going to take advanced science courses in their future and those who would go no further than this class for formal science education. Therefore, I believe science teaching and learning should be about the content and building life long skills. Science teaching and learning should create a foundation of critical analysis and a questioning thought process that students can access throughout their lives. At this point, the enduring understanding of being a scientifically literate adult came to light.