Introduction
Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.
~ Mark Twain
~ Mark Twain
I was a junior in college when I realized that in another year I was to be thrown ceremoniously into the work force to make my way as a scientist. It also dawned on me that I was utterly unprepared for that impending eventuality. I had zero experience in a lab of the real world or academic variety. All my hands-on experience had come from pre-scripted lab assignments, with clear goals and patently right answers. Sometimes I got it ‘right’, but more often than not, I found I was wrong, which, my laboratory professor explained in a pained voice, meant my technique sucked. I was a failure for not knowing how to do a western blot the first time out. This was the extent of my education so far. However, I was aware that serious students were hitting up professors for volunteer hours in their labs, working on real projects (or possibly just washing the glassware), and getting some much needed experience, and even more importantly, reference letters for actual jobs after school. It was time I did the same.
After a seriously long internal pep talk, I ventured into my favorite professor’s office to offer my meager laboratory skills. Dr. Redgrave kindly told me that she had a waiting list of freshmen lined up to work in her lab when they eventually became upper classmen and she couldn’t accommodate me. However, there was a new professor down the hall who was just hired and probably didn’t have that problem yet. I walked down the hall. Dr. Shoal was dwarfed by a ginormous umbrella plant, a welcome gift from the botanist next door. I sat down and gamely offered to volunteer in his lab. When he said, “This must be my lucky day! I just had a master’s student apply too!” I knew I’d hit the jackpot. Then he said something that I’d never heard. Not once in my sixteen years of education. “So, what do you want to work on?”
“Uh…,” was my eloquent response.
And then a fire like I’d never known consumed my every waking moment. I read all his papers, I read the papers he cited, and the papers they cited. I became an expert on crustacean hormonal systems and found that sweet spot, that spot where you realize the literature ends and you are poised on a cliff staring out over a vast ocean of uncharted territory, the unplumbed depths of original research.
Then I began to plan. I studied techniques and wrote up procedures. Suddenly procedures I’d done blindly and with all the interest of clipping my toenails now made sense. I needed them to explore my questions. I wrote up twenty pages of procedures to try and sequence crustacean hyperglycemic hormone from Cancer magister, the tasty Dungeness crab. It had never been done before.
Then I began to work.
After a seriously long internal pep talk, I ventured into my favorite professor’s office to offer my meager laboratory skills. Dr. Redgrave kindly told me that she had a waiting list of freshmen lined up to work in her lab when they eventually became upper classmen and she couldn’t accommodate me. However, there was a new professor down the hall who was just hired and probably didn’t have that problem yet. I walked down the hall. Dr. Shoal was dwarfed by a ginormous umbrella plant, a welcome gift from the botanist next door. I sat down and gamely offered to volunteer in his lab. When he said, “This must be my lucky day! I just had a master’s student apply too!” I knew I’d hit the jackpot. Then he said something that I’d never heard. Not once in my sixteen years of education. “So, what do you want to work on?”
“Uh…,” was my eloquent response.
And then a fire like I’d never known consumed my every waking moment. I read all his papers, I read the papers he cited, and the papers they cited. I became an expert on crustacean hormonal systems and found that sweet spot, that spot where you realize the literature ends and you are poised on a cliff staring out over a vast ocean of uncharted territory, the unplumbed depths of original research.
Then I began to plan. I studied techniques and wrote up procedures. Suddenly procedures I’d done blindly and with all the interest of clipping my toenails now made sense. I needed them to explore my questions. I wrote up twenty pages of procedures to try and sequence crustacean hyperglycemic hormone from Cancer magister, the tasty Dungeness crab. It had never been done before.
Then I began to work.
***
“So what do you want to work on?” Amazing how such a simple question could elicit such a powerful response. Why did it take sixteen years to be given the opportunity to ask my own questions? What happens when we ask students to generate their own questions? How I can effectively scaffold inquiry learning in my classroom and how does it affect student motivation?
During my teaching career so far I have tried to address this question and found limited success. Students are spectacular at generating questions. Last year I focused on having students record their questions as they observed the world around them, activities in the classroom, or even YouTube videos that got them thinking. The results were profound. Within weeks we had generated hundreds of questions about the universe around us. The tricky part came in identifying researchable questions and then planning out experiments to test them. Understanding the inquiry process in a clear and actionable way is a challenge for many students. In light of this, a variety of sub-questions presented themselves: What does student inquiry look like in the classroom? What skills do students already have? What skills are involved in inquiry? How do we effectively explore our questions? How can I measure the development of inquiry skills? How can I effectively scaffold these skills for students? Does inquiry learning motivate students, as it did me? This book outlines how I explored these questions, and describes my findings. My hope is that my journey will be useful to other educators interested in a more authentic experience of science in their classrooms too.
During my teaching career so far I have tried to address this question and found limited success. Students are spectacular at generating questions. Last year I focused on having students record their questions as they observed the world around them, activities in the classroom, or even YouTube videos that got them thinking. The results were profound. Within weeks we had generated hundreds of questions about the universe around us. The tricky part came in identifying researchable questions and then planning out experiments to test them. Understanding the inquiry process in a clear and actionable way is a challenge for many students. In light of this, a variety of sub-questions presented themselves: What does student inquiry look like in the classroom? What skills do students already have? What skills are involved in inquiry? How do we effectively explore our questions? How can I measure the development of inquiry skills? How can I effectively scaffold these skills for students? Does inquiry learning motivate students, as it did me? This book outlines how I explored these questions, and describes my findings. My hope is that my journey will be useful to other educators interested in a more authentic experience of science in their classrooms too.