Reconsidering the Character and Role of Inquiry in School Science: Analysis of a Conference

Richard A. Duschl Graduate School of Education Rutgers University Introduction This is a report of an NSF sponsored conference we organized whose purpose was to provide a structure for discussion of science education with the goal of summarizing and synthesizing developments in three domains (1) science studies, e.g., history, philosophy and sociology of science (2) the learning sciences, e.g., cognitive science, philosophy of mind, educational psychology, social psychology, computer sciences, linguistics, and (3) educational research focusing on the design of learning environments that promote inquiry and that facilitate dynamic assessments. These three domains have reshaped our thinking about the role that inquiry has in science education programs. Over the past 50 years there have been dynamic changes in our conceptualizations of science, of learning, and of science learning environments. Such changes have important implications for how we interpret (1) the role of inquiry in K-12 science education programs and (2) the design of curriculum, instruction, and assessment models that strive to meet the NSES inquiry goals: • Students should learn to do scientific inquiry. • Students should develop an understanding of scientific inquiry. Although these domains have undergone closely related changes, the communication among them has been very partial and haphazard. The point of our conference was to provide a rich structure for interaction. We wrote a plenary paper, which was circulated before hand, and discussed the first evening. On each of the following two days there were four main papers, each with a commentator, followed at the end of the day by a four person panel. Day one was devoted to Philosophical Issues and Next Steps for Research, and day two to Policy, Practice and Next Steps for Educational Research. The conference participants included philosophers, psychologists and educational researchers. (The list of participants and their paper titles is in Appendix A--more complete information, including the papers and comments can be located at the conference website http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~rgrandy/ConferenceInfo.html.