New Perspectives in Science Education

In teaching science, student-directed inquiry approach has become popular where students ask their own questions and seek ways to answer them. Therefore, the ability of asking questions that can be answered through investigations is one of the most important components of scientific inquiry. However, students do not always ask investigable and task-specific questions. This study focused on how going outside and investigating the density of earthworms in their natural setting was effective for improving students’ subsequent questions about these creatures. Another focus was to examine how this affected students’ nature of science views. The study was conducted in two sections of a scientific inquiry class in a Midwestern University. Data sources included the VNOS-B, student worksheet that included student-generated questions the post-reflection sheet. The questions written by the students were compiled and sorted as investigable and non-investigable, and specific and general. The questions were categorized by using the typology created by Chin (2002). The results showed that students asked more specific questions for the second investigation as compared to the first investigation. Students asked less descriptive questions and more cause-and-effect and pattern-seeking questions after the first investigation. VNOS-B results showed a visible difference on some students’ understandings of scientific creativity.The findings from our study contribute to the field of teaching and learning science in three ways. First, we assert that giving students opportunities to observe creatures in their natural habitat, as well as promoting them to ask their own questions following their own interests and modifying these questions as needed, improves their ability to generate good investigable questions. We recommend that teachers should introduce students with interesting scientific phenomena, which stimulate a variety of questions.   Second, students need to experience analyzing instructors’ questions so they can begin to realize how they can ask good investigable questions. Therefore, as instructors, we need to improve our questioning skills, and create a classroom atmosphere, which promotes children’ s curiosity. Third, integrating NOS into scientific inquiry context improves students’ ability to connect NOS tenets into real science activities.