Keystone Science Network Fall Colloquium 2001

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Keystone Colloquium, February 28, 2002
The Process Circus: Developing the Process Skills of Inquiry-Based Science

Based on a workshop developed by San Francisco's Exploratorium Institute for Inquiry in collaboration with noted British science educator Wynne Harlen, this colloquium focused attention on a variety of skills central to doing science. The day's agenda encouraged participants to:

engage in activities designed to highlight particular process skills;
reflect on the specific nature of those skills and the roles they play in student's learning; and
think about how to help students develop specific skills by redesigning portions of classroom activities and by purposefully focusing museum visits or online time.

The day begins with some engaging activities designed to highlight particular process skills—and to provide a common experience as a basis for discussion.

Working in pairs, participants circulate through six stations to determine the main process skill required by each activity.

The instructions read:

Take a strip of paper and hold it vertically with one end in the water.
Watch what happens for about a minute.
Write down any questions that occur to you as a result of your observations.

Is this mainly calling for observing? Communicating? Questioning?

Many of the groups identify the wording of specific tasks as giving clues for the skill to be used—something to keep in mind when devising learning experiences!

At this station, teachers are told: "Place two mirrors at an angle so that reflections of the coin can be seen…. Can you see a relationship between the number of images you get and the angle between the mirrors? (Drawing a graph may help.)"

As experienced inquirers, eager to investigate their own questions, participants are tempted to linger and experiment further, but the facilitators help keep them on task.

Groups wrestle with how to characterize skills, define terms, and uncover ambiguities. What is the difference between a prediction and a hypothesis?

Asked to create a series of drawings to communicate their understanding of how velcro works, would learners need to use predominantly observation skills? Hypothesis? Communication?

The investigation continues

The Franklin Institute gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the National Science Foundation and Unisys Corporation.

The Franklin Institute is the Demonstration Site for the Eisenhower Mid-Atlantic Consortium, providing science and math resources for teachers.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 9819641.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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