Scientific Inquiry:
To what extent does the content, presentation method,
and learner activity facilitate inquiry-based learning
as described and intended by the content developer
for the page? Does the web page clearly and explicitly
encourage students to ask questions, plan and conduct
investigations, use appropriate tools and techniques
to gather data, think critically and logically about
relationships between evidence and explanations, analyze
alternative explanations, or facilitate communicating
scientific arguments for debate and critique?
Participants rate
the web page for the following criteria:
| Initial/Preliminary Inquiry |
Intermediate Inquiry |
Full/Complete Inquiry |
|
i. Provides
a specific step-by-step procedure for the
investigation and data collection techniques-prescriptive
in nature as students record data as they
conduct their inquiry (either hands-on or
online).
|
i. Challenges
learners to answer or contemplate investigative
questions that are related to an appropriate
national science education standard, e.g.
questions related to discrepant events in
nature.
ii. Encourages
students to explicitly reflect on and use
their prior knowledge and skills of the concept/inquiry
at hand.
|
Full/Complete inquiry facilitates
three or more of the following items:
-
Not only
encourages students to clarify provided
questions, but recommends posing new questions
for study relevant to the student's understanding
with prompts (extended areas for inquiry)
that are related to appropriate NSES.
-
Encourages learners to determine investigative
procedure, methodologies, and data to collect.
-
Encourages
students to use their prior knowledge
and skills.
-
Explicitly
embeds instruction that directs learner to construct,
consider, state, investigate, or evaluate alternative
explanations. Example prompts are provided.
-
Explicitly
embeds instruction to help make connections
between inquiry and current scientific knowledge,
providing URL links or content for further
examination that facilitates conceptual ties
and versus stating relationships explicitly.
-
Explicitly
embeds instruction that directs learners to communicate their findings
and receive critique. Directions are provided that encourage
communicating reasonable and logical arguments to critiques.
|
|
This
single-page rubric distills more extensive
materials developed by the Council of State
Science Supervisors (CSSS) for use with instructional
materials in print, as published on the NLIST
(Networking for Leadership, Inquiry and Systemic
Thinking) website.
|