A perspective on inquiry

In this interview, Norman Budnitz, cofounder of the Center for Inquiry Based Learning, talks about inquiry and how to teach with it in a K–12 classroom.

By Waverly Harrell

Inquiry activities

The Center for Inquiry Based Learning provides instructions for exercises designed to promote inquiry. If you try any of these, remember the light bulb story: teach the lesson as a problem, not as a recipe!

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Edward Jenner developed the smallpox vaccine after observing that milkmaids who had had cowpox did not come down with smallpox.

Thomas Edison experimented extensively with different filament materials for light bulbs, only settling on bamboo six months after filing his patent application.

Once they saw the X-ray diffraction data produced by Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins, James Watson and Francis Crick realized that their initial DNA model was inside-out.

When Copernicus proposed that Earth revolved around the Sun, he was contradicting centuries of firm belief that Earth was the center of the solar system.

Science requires observation and experimentation. Science builds on previous knowledge. Sometimes, science contradicts earlier beliefs. Scientific progress depends on curiosity, on people who ask questions and patiently look for answers. Why don’t milkmaids get smallpox? What material will light up without quickly burning up? How can these molecules logically fit together? What causes the seasons?

“Science is a process of asking questions,” says Norman Budnitz, cofounder of the Center for Inquiry Based Learning (CIBL) and training director at Teachers and Scientists Collaborating (TASC).

If the question you’re asking requires observation, it’s making careful long-term observations. If the question requires experimentation, it’s designing careful experiments that will address the question that you’re answering. It’s understanding cause and effect, and being able to see cause and effect when it’s there, and being able to understand that what you see may not be cause and effect, when it’s not. It’s an ongoing process.

Little by little over time, we’re developing better and better answers to all those questions. And science is the process by which you do that.

Inquiry and the scientific process

Inquiry is now a strand in the North Carolina Standard Course of Study. Although inquiry is multifaceted (“Inquiry is a very skittish beast,” says Budnitz), its basis is asking questions. In an inquiry-based science lesson, students formulate their own questions and answer questions through their own exploration. Inquiry-based lessons allow different students to solve problems in different ways, capitalizing on their individual strengths. Inquiry also gives students an idea of how scientists work and whether science is something they’d like to do.

“If students are to understand the scientific process, they must make decisions themselves,” reads the 2004 Standard Course of Study. “Students who learn to question, debate, and explore acquire a deeper understanding of the world. By discovering principles, rather than just memorizing them, students learn not just what we know, but how we know it, and why it is important.”

Teaching this way is hard. Thinking this way is hard. “When you go to science class,” Budnitz says, “you learn certain basic things, and then next year you find out, gee, some of those things aren’t right any more. They told me I wasn’t supposed to eat eggs, too much cholesterol. Now they’re telling me it’s okay to eat some eggs. Wait a minute.” At least no one was basing breakfast decisions on Earth’s centrality in the universe.

Inquiry involves students and challenges them. Most people, Budnitz believes, “learn by doing things. They learn by getting enmeshed in stuff.” In one California school district, students taught inquiry-based science for four years showed steady improvements on tests of both science achievement and writing proficiency. “I think if you teach kids inquiry, you’re teaching them how to think,” says Budnitz. “It opens them to the whole process of how do you puzzle out stuff. And what could be more valuable?”

Teaching teachers

Budnitz has been training teachers how to teach science as inquiry for six years now. Before working with TASC and CIBL, he taught biology at Carolina Friends School for twenty-two years. TASC runs one- and two-day workshops for teachers of kindergarten through eighth grade that introduce inquiry-based lessons reflecting the competency goals for each grade. For instance, the fourth grade lessons are Animal Studies, Food Chemistry, Magnetism and Electricity, and Rocks and Minerals. Materials needed to teach these lessons are collected in kits provided after training. Training slots are offered first to TASC’s six partner school districts, then to the public. TASC has been funded by the National Science Foundation through 2007. Later, its work will be continued by CIBL, an independent nonprofit organization.

“The typical training is, they come for a day,” Budnitz says. “The first day is approximately the first half of the kit. They use the kit for about three weeks. They come back the second day for the second half of the kit, and that’s a time when they can talk about what went well, what didn’t work. You know, ‘Gee, I tried this thing, I couldn’t get it to work,’ and then some other teacher will say, ‘You know, if you do it this way…’ So there’s a lot of sharing of wisdom.” Eight weeks after the beginning of training, the teachers are asked to ship the kits back so the next group of teachers can use them. Last year, TASC worked with approximately 1200 teachers. “There are teachers who have come back for a second, third, and even now, a few, their fourth kit,” says Budnitz. “So that’s good. If they’re coming back, it’s because they want to.”

Hands-on vs. inquiry

Hands-on science lessons do not necessarily involve inquiry, Budnitz stresses. Say you’re working on electrical circuits, and every pair of children has a light bulb, a wire, and a battery. You can draw a diagram on the board showing the students how to get the bulb to light up, then wait until everyone does it correctly. That’s a hands-on project, but it’s not inquiry. The students are neither asking the questions nor exploring the answers on their own.

To take the same materials and conduct an inquiry-based lesson, the teacher could instead say, “‘Here’s a battery. Here’s a wire. Here’s bulb. Get the bulb to light up.’”Budnitz explains:

So then they fumble around and fumble around and finally somebody gets the bulb to light. ‘I got it, I got it!’ Meanwhile, the other kids are still struggling on. And instead of stopping there with that kid,” Budnitz says, “I go over to that kid and I say, ‘Show me another way to get the bulb to light.’ Because there’s more than one way. In fact there are four ways.” While the first pair figures out the other three ways, other pairs of students get their bulb to light for the first time.

Eventually, many of the students will figure out all four ways to get the bulb to light up. Some will only find one or two. “And that’s allowed. They don’t have to find all four ways. That’s part of the inquiry process, is that the kids do what they can, and rise to the occasion to the best of their ability. And you nudge them with the right questions…As opposed to, set it up this way and everybody’s bulb lights.

But, says Budnitz, not everything can be taught with inquiry.

It took people many thousands of years to figure out Newton’s laws, right? There’s a lot of stuff that went into that before Newton ever got to it and put it together. So we can’t ask sixth graders to figure that out. But everything that you teach can have a little bit of inquiry. I think that no matter what it is you teach, you can use a little something to make it an interaction between teachers and students and among students, as opposed to just the teacher says, the student does. You can get a little bit of inquiry in everything you teach.

Serving students with inquiry

Maybe there’s a future inventor in your class, or a future geneticist. Probably you have students who are happier working with their hands than reading. Students who don’t shine in memorization may be creative problem solvers. Students who don’t write particularly well may be highly observant. It’s unlikely that the same student will have the best answer first in every inquiry-based lesson. Asking students to generate questions, make observations, solve problems, and collaborate on solutions will allow more of them to show you what they can do.

It’s hard to let students puzzle through problems and make mistakes. You may not be used to presenting problems without one right answer. It takes time to learn how much information is a good hint, and how much gives away the answer. But if you can incorporate some inquiry into your classes, if you can to some extent let your students ask their own questions and conduct their own explorations, you will help them to understand how science works. The principles they learn will be more salient and memorable. They’ll be engaged. And they’ll be learning to think for themselves, which will serve them well all their lives.