Introducing argumentation in inquiry—a combination of five exemplary activities

Abstract

Successfully carrying out a secondary school physics inquiry requires a considerable amount of procedural and content knowledge. It further requires knowledge of how and why maintaining scientific standards produces the best available answer to the given research question. To this purpose, a series of five inquiry activities was developed and tested in a single case study with students aged 14. The test shows that students indeed come to use a more scientific approach to inquiry tasks and understand why they should do so. We believe that this series of activities can serve as a starting point for more complex physics inquiries.

What do they know? Investigating students’ ability to analyse experimental data in secondary physics education

“…This combination of characteristics is probably necessary, but not necessarily sufficient in constructing a viable pathway of inquiry learning. Our current research is directed at developing and evaluating these ideas in a practical sense (Pols et al, 2019). We think we may do so by changing students' task perception to that of an experienced scientific researcher: find and defend the best possible answer given the circumstances.…”

“…Preparatory activities are used to teach the necessity of repeating measurements, the importance of choosing an optimal data spread and range, and the purpose of averaging measured values. Students explore relationships between (1) body and arm length (Pols et al, 2019), (2) mass and period of a pendulum and (3), the distance travelled and number of cups propelled by a rolling marble (Farmer, 2012).…”

Comparing Different Uncertainty Measures to Quantify Measurement Uncertainties in High School Science Experiments

“…Despite the difficulties that students have in understanding measurement uncertainties, there are indications that students can reason with and identify (components of) uncertainties as early as third grade (Gal et al, 1989;Masnick & Klahr, 2003;Metz, 2004;Petrosino et al, 2003). Ford (2005), Munier et al, (2013), Pols et al, (2019) report lively discussions where students are encouraged to think about the credibility and limitations of their results. In all cases, students realize that reporting an indication of the uncertainty will be necessary.…”

What’s inside the pink box? A nature of science activity for teachers and students

“…As a researcher and (former) physics teacher, I developed and gave several teacher professionalization workshops related to practical work and teaching scientific inquiry at secondary school level. This activity is part of a workshop that focuses on a learning pathway for physics inquiry in secondary physics education [12]. The activity found its offspring in the idea that teaching scientific inquiry does not always mean that students ought to be engaged in practical work where valuable time is spent on gathering data.…”