Promoting the asking of research questions in a high-school biotechnology inquiry-oriented program

Background: Asking questions is an important scientific practice, and students around the world are expected to learn how to ask their own research questions while performing inquiry. In contrast to authentic scientific inquiry, in most simple inquiry tasks that are carried out in schools, the research questions are given to the students. Here, we characterized the teaching and learning of research-question-asking in the context of an innovative inquiry-oriented program for high-school biotechnology majors, focusing on two case studies of lessons in which students were expected to formulate their research questions. Results: In-depth examination of students’ questions, written during the two lessons, revealed that only in one of the lessons students’ ability to ask research questions improved. A connection was found between the more student-centered, dialogic, and interactive teaching strategy and the development of students’ ability to ask research questions in that class. Most of the research questions that were investigated by the students originated from a peer-critique activity during the student-centered lesson, unlike the teacher-focused lesson from which none of the students’ suggested research questions were selected for investigation. Conclusions: It can be concluded that a student-centered, dialogic, and interactive teaching strategy may contribute to the development of students’ ability to ask research questions in an inquiry-oriented high-school program. Encouraging teachers to implement dialogic and interactive classroom discourse in authentic inquiry could be a meaningful tool to support the teaching and learning of scientific abilities such as asking research questions.