Update on Investigative Approaches to Science Teaching
Types of Investigative and Enquiry Based Work

 We are very grateful to Walter Whitelaw of the Midlothian Council Education Service on whose recent training materials, much of this update section is based.

As stressed elsewhere in this section, the conventional practical investigation is just one type of active learning in science, albeit a very important one. A number of other kinds of enquiry based activity, whilst not 'experiments' in the usual sense, lend support to the development of investigative skills. Such types of activities, all investigative in that broader sense, are catalogued below.

Types of enquiry based learning in science

Classifying and identifying
  • Arranging objects, events, phenomena into sets and naming these or recognising objects, events, phenomena as members of a set
  • Explaining the reason for the grouping
  • How can I group these vertebrates?
  • Which things conduct electricity or not?
  • What is this substance?

Exploring
  • Making careful observations of objects or events, or observations over time
  • Explaining the observations
  • What happens to a butterfly egg over time?
  • What happens when different metals are added to water?
  • What is the weather like this week?
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Fair testing
  • Observing and exploring relationships between variables and factors. Measuring the effect of changing one factor, all others kept constant
  • Making a conclusion against a starting hypothesis e.g.
    • How does temperature affect the rate of a process or reaction?
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Pattern seeking
  • Observing and recording natural phenomena or events or carrying out surveys, then seeking patterns in the data
  • Explaining the pattern
  • How does the plant community change from riverside to open field?
Making things or developing systems
  • Designing, testing and adapting an artefact of system
  • Applying scientific ideas and principles to inform design
  • Design a pressure pad switch for a burglar alarm
  • Develop a technique for measuring the growth of a bean plant

 

Investigating models
  • Trying out explanations to see whether they work or make sense
  • Evaluating the relationship between theory and evidence
  • Water movement through a stem is driven by evaporation from the leaves
  • Using historical examples
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