While there is ambiguity over the definition of IBL there is consistency in the description of the components of IBL in the literature ( Rocard et al., 2007, Varley et al., 2008a, Varley et al., 2008b, Walker, 2007, Zion et al., 2007). According to Zion et al, both students and teachers play a role in inquiry education, where teachers should not expect the students to do inquiry on their own (Kirschner et al., 2006, Mayer, 2004, Zion et al., 2007). This recalls the previous descriptions of guided and unguided discovery by Mayer (Mayer, 2004). Zion et al. state that the teacher’s role encompasses facilitating, focussing, challenging and encouraging students in inquiry (Zion et al., 2007). This means that while it would be up to the student to carry out the components of IBSE, it is still up to the teacher to facilitate these to ensure that the students do not develop misunderstandings. This is particularly important in the context of this research where, early primary school students would not have the basic knowledge of inquiry or science needed to carry out an investigation alone. It could be argued however, that scaffolding the IBSE process across school years would allow older primary school students to carry out investigations with only facilitation by the teacher. The scaffolding process will be described further below (Hmelo-Silver et al., 2007). The concept also relates heavily to the idea of the teacher’s schema which must be sufficiently developed in order to have the ability to facilitate science rather than deductively teach it (Korthagen, 2010).
The concept of scaffolding learning is a primary component of inquiry (Hmelo-Silver et al., 2007, Walker, 2007, Zembal-Saul, 2009). Scaffolding is the development of knowledge and understanding from building on prior knowledge and understanding (ibid). With relation to this research, the importance of scaffolding and guided
development does not only apply to student’s knowledge and learning but can also be applied to the knowledge and development of inquiry skills for the teacher. The 5E model, which will be discussed in the next Section, could be considered as a scaffold for the pedagogy of inquiry (Bybee et al, 1996). Returning to the concept of teacher education, inquiry through the lens of the 5Es may also be argued as developing a teacher’s schema in inquiry.
In order to identify the components of inquiry both the curriculum and the teacher guidelines in Ireland were consulted. The Irish curriculum lists the components of inquiry as; observing, hypothesising, predicting, experimenting, planning fair tests and analysing results (DES, 1999a, DES, 1999b). These components are in line with the description of the NoS above and may be presented as a reason to why science should be carried out through inquiry. The National Research Council of America has, as its components of inquiry; questioning, develop and evaluate explanations, format explanations, evaluate student experiences and communicate and justify student explanations (NRC, 2000). It is obvious from the definition that the Rocard et al. report expands on these elements of inquiry and individual methodologies such as “diagnosing, critiquing, planning investigations, researching, debating and arguing” (Rocard et al., 2007). These individual methodologies support the elements of IBSE as put forward from the NCCA. This provides further evidence that the selection of the Rocard et al. definition of inquiry should be the one taken for this research.
As it can be seen from above the literature highlights the uses of both questioning and explanations in an inquiry lesson. One of the principle constituents of inquiry teaching and learning is the idea of questioning (Anderson, 2002, Davis and Smithey, 2008, DES, 1999a, Van Zee and Roberts, 2006, Kahn and O'Rourke, 2004, Zion et al., 2007). In using questioning as a methodology the teacher can either begin an inquiry lesson by asking a question or let the student ask their own questions to begin studying a new topic. Interestingly, the Irish primary school curriculum does not specifically state questioning as a component of inquiry. It does however list questioning as one of the key skills of SESE (DES, 1999). The key skills are listed as; observe, question, investigate, understand and think logically. Most of these components are present in the use of investigations which form one of the key
constructivist and inquiry based methodologies such as planning, designing, researching, exploring and questioning (DES, 1999, 1999a).
Another key constituent of inquiry is the idea of constructing explanations from inquiry. Here the teacher uses an inquiry lesson to elicit students’ explanations of phenomena from their previous knowledge and experiences. Explanation construction is important to an inquiry lesson as it forms a way for the teacher to identify misunderstandings in the classroom (Allen, 1997, Zembal-Saul, 2009). While these are the components of IBSE it must be pointed out that the Rocard et al. report stated that a teacher may include deductive teaching methods as well as inductive teaching in order to suit the different learning styles of students (Rocard et al., 2007). It is for this reason that more traditional methodologies such as experiment demonstrations can still be included in resources supporting the practice of inquiry, once they are properly structured and placed within a student centred environment. As stated previously, the NCCA report discovered that teachers were still using textbooks as primary resources in their teaching in Ireland (Varley et al., 2008a, 2013). A study was carried out as part of this research into textbooks, and whether they could be used to support inquiry in the classroom. This study will be described further in Chapter 4.
Now that the components of inquiry have been described, the question arises as to how to utilise these components in the classroom. A teacher may use any of these components individually and believe that they have carried out an inquiry lesson. The next section will take these components and show how, in order to carry out an inquiry lesson, a teacher must use them in a process rather than individually.