Winona Chemistry Professor Presents two Seminars Jan. 28
Winona State University Chemistry Professor John Deming presents two seminars Thursday, Jan. 28 in Hagen Hall 113. “Inquiry Instruction That Works: A guide to developing scientific thinking skills” will be held from 3:30-4:30 p.m. and “Evaluation of Inquiry,” a one-hour seminar on effectively assessing inquiry in science, will be held from 4:30-5:30 p.m.
Inquiry Instruction That Works Abstract:
Chemistry is an extremely difficult subject to teach. This is because almost every topic covered in the course is what we term formal content. Formal content is subject matter that requires formal reasoning ability to understand. Modern high school chemistry textbooks are filled cover-to-cover with formal concepts, yet research shows that only about 25% of college freshman and less than 10% of high school juniors have well-developed formal thinking abilities. Thus, many teachers resort to teaching for memorization rather than understanding in the chemistry classroom because they are frustrated when students cannot learn formal concepts. Classes such as physics and math above algebra face similar problems.
To counteract this problem, instructors should adopt specific inquiry-teaching strategies, which are proven to increase students’ conceptual knowledge while simultaneously enhancing their reasoning ability. This talk will answer the question what is inquiry (and what it is not) and will describe what it actually looks like in a classroom. In addition, we will discuss some barriers to implementation, how to convert traditional materials into inquiry materials, and will provide some data on effectiveness. If you are a teacher of younger grades, implementing these techniques can improve your student’s reasoning ability, and thus success, in these classes requiring formal reasoning.
Evaluation of Inquiry Abstract:
Piaget’s constructivism provides the theoretical framework for this presentation. Previous studies have shown that students have more difficulty answering conceptual questions than algorithmic questions. The series of studies presented here show a link between scientific reasoning ability and students’ success rates when answering conceptual chemistry questions. The results of these studies suggest that students’ conceptual understanding of chemistry is linked to their thinking skills as measured during our diagnostic assessment. We will also discuss the implications for assessing students’ content knowledge and thinking skills.
In some cases, administrators face new challenges when assessing teachers who employ innovative curricular strategies. Similarly, it is often problematic for teachers to constructively evaluate their colleagues’ teaching practices. Therefore, we will also discuss appropriate evaluation strategies (both formative and summative) that can be used when assessing inquiry-teaching strategies.
For more about John Deming.