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Lee’s conceptual understanding 1
LEE’S GUIDED INQUIRY-BASED LABORATORY
The Effect of Guided Inquiry Laboratory
on
Conceptual Understanding
Miha Lee
California State University, Northridge
Lee’s conceptual understanding 2The Effect of Guided Inquiry Laboratory
on
Conceptual Understanding
Many educational reform efforts in the United States have called for a shift in the
emphasis of science education from memorization of facts and procedures to a deeper
understanding of the subject matter. (American Association for the Advancement of Science,
1993; National Research Council, 1996; National Research Council, 2005) In the same vein, the
National Science Education Standards was released, calling for inquiry as a way in which
“students actively develop their understanding of science by combining scientific knowledge with
reasoning and thinking skills (NRC, 1996, p.2).” Recommendations for improved teaching of
science are solidly rooted in a commitment to teaching both through and about inquiry.
(Crawford, 2000; NRC, 1996; NRC, 2005) Personally, in this Information Age when knowledge
is flooded everywhere, as a chemistry teacher how should I teach my students? I have been
seeking for answers to this question.
Teaching for understanding
To begin this research, I posed a basic question: how students learn science? When I
began to teach, I conceived of learning with understanding as a matter of taking in information
with clarity. Consequently, to ‘make’ my students understand concepts and principles, I explained
Lee’s conceptual understanding 3in detail them with a lot of demonstrations and visual aids. However, it turned out that many
students still had trouble understanding basic concepts of chemistry. What’s wrong with my
teaching? An experienced colleague advised me, “It is not what you say that students learn. They
just learn what they want to learn.” This advice made me realize that teaching should be focused
on what the teacher gets the students to do rather than what the teacher does (Perkins, 1993).
Constructivism also encourages student-centered instruction insisting that learning of
science is the knowledge construction that involves both individual and social processes (Driver,
Asoko, Leach, Mortimer & Scott, 1994; Singer, Marx, Krajcik, & Chambers, 2000). The personal
construction of meaning is a dynamic process that requires the active engagement of the learner
(Holzer, 1994). To be understood, knowledge is directly experienced, constructed, acted upon,
tested, or revised by the learner, but it is the teacher that is responsible for creating a learning
environment (Driver et al, 1994; Holzer, 1994; Perkins, 1993; Vosniadou, Dimitrakopoulou &
Papademetriou, 2001).
But, how do I know if students understand what I teach? According to Perkins
(1993), the more thought demanding performances the student can display, the more confident we
would be that the student understand. It makes me find a way to monitor and evaluate students’
learning.
Importance of laboratory in chemistry education
Lee’s conceptual understanding 4The school science laboratory had been given a central and distinctive role in science
education. It helps students understand abstract concepts and develop reasoning skills and
scientific method of investigation to a degree that cannot be accomplished by lecture or
demonstration alone (Allen, Baker & Ramsden, 1986; Domin, 2007; Hofstein & Lunetta, 2004).
As a result, Korean educational policy requires that the laboratory experiments count for at least
30% of the total score. Indeed, I did a lot of laboratory works with my students as a way to teach
chemistry.
Nevertheless, traditional experiments have been blamed as “cookbook exercises”
that students are not stimulated intellectually and thus little motivated because they use highly
structured materials to verify concepts presented previously in lecture (Allen et al., 1986;
Monteyne & Cracolice, 2004) Frankly speaking, majority of my laboratory activities were
conducted after classroom instructions as verifications of the knowledge students learned, while
my demonstrations were during or before lectures. Admittedly, students in traditional labs can
thoughtlessly follow written instructions and fill in the blanks of data table so that they ascertain
that what the teacher or the textbook told them are true. Then, how can laboratory be integrated
into instruction to promote leaning for understanding?
Guided inquiry laboratory as a solution
With the increasing emphasis on student-centered learning and the importance of
Lee’s conceptual understanding 5laboratory in science education, inquiry-based teaching attracted my attention. Many researches
have provided substantial evidence for the relative ineffectiveness of lecture instruction and for
the relative value obtained with well-designed inquiry laboratory based instruction (Crawford,
2000; Driver et al., 1994; Singer et al., 2000; Vosniadou et al., 2001).
Opportunities to learn science as a process of inquiry has important advantages.
During the investigation, students interact with the physical world, document their observations,
and think about what these observations mean about the physical world. Specifically, developing
scientific knowledge of chemistry challenges us to conceptualize aspects of the world that we do
not directly experience. As a result, students need to be given accessible opportunities to
conceptualize those aspects during laboratory activities (NRC, 2005). It is How Students Learn
(NRC, 2005) that inspired me to use inquiry-based instruction by showing what science learning
experience should be.
Learning experiences need to develop from first-hand, concrete experiences to the
more distant or abstract. Ideas develop from experiences, and technical terms
develop from the ideas and operations that are rooted in those experiences. Students
need opportunities to see where ideas come from, and they need to be held
responsible for knowing and communicating the origins of their knowledge. The
teacher should also bring forth critical questions that are vital to the content being
Lee’s conceptual understanding 6taught. The better questions are those that raise issues about the big ideas important
to deep understanding of the discipline (p.512).
Especially, guided inquiry seems to be a student-centered but effective way to teach
the knowledge and method of chemistry in the practical setting of secondary schools. Guided
inquiry laboratory is defined as an experiment where the students discover the concept for
themselves using their own laboratory data (Allen et al., 1986; Colburn, 2000; Domin, 2007).
Thus, I decided to use guided-inquiry based laboratory as an instructional mode that promotes
conceptual understanding.
Purpose
To teach for understanding, having accurate subject matter knowledge is not
sufficient (Perkins, 1993). It is pedagogical content knowledge that is required for teachers to
have because it is derived from content knowledge that is specifically employed to facilitate
learning. It is the knowledge that teachers have about how to make particular subject matter
comprehensible to particular students, for it is the knowledge of the concepts that students find
most difficult, as well as ways to support their understanding of those concepts. Finally, it
includes ways to assess student knowledge (NRC, 2005). I hope to develop pedagogical content
knowledge through this study to deepen my commitment to teaching for understanding and
sharpen the focus of my teaching efforts.
Lee’s conceptual understanding 7This action research provides me the opportunity to
1. probe systematically students’ prior knowledge regarding metal.
2. design a series of guided-inquiry lab activities and put them into practice.
3. find multiple ways to determine the depth of students’ understanding.
Research questions
The purpose of this research is to examine the following questions:
1. What are the students’ prior knowledge regarding the concept of metal?
2. How do I know whether the students’ conceptual understanding takes place?
3. Is the students’ engagement in the guided inquiry-based laboratory an effective
way in promoting understanding?
Importance of study
While research findings have been helpful in identifying problematic conceptions,
less is known regarding the pace at which students are capable of undergoing conceptual change
with effective instructional experiences (NRC, 2005).
Liew and Treagust (1998) conducted a research in which eighteen 11th grade students
performed three POE tasks, including the expansion of water, solubility of salt, and power and
resistance of light bulbs. They found that POE tasks were effective in capturing a wide range of
students’ prior knowledge and assessing their understanding. Harrison and Treagust (2001)
employed a model based instruction to teach 7 11th grade students in chemistry class for an
Lee’s conceptual understanding 8academic year and found that interpretation of students’ conceptual change required multiple
perspectives to be reliable. Minstrell and Kraus (NRC, 2005) used guided inquiry to foster
conceptual understanding of universal gravitation and related inverse square force law and
showed what it means to teach in a way that is student-centered, knowledge-centered, and
assessment-centered. However, all of them were conducted in clinical conditions and provided
data of few students from detailed case studies for the description of their learning process.
Therefore, there was little information about how to incorporate student experiments in the
school laboratory into instructions to foster conceptual understanding.
On the other hand, Domin (2007) conducted a research to compare the effectiveness
of two types of laboratory instructions – verification and problem-based – in conceptual
development by surveying and interviewing 18 college students after the semesters ended. They
found that students’ preference of each type of laboratory instruction was almost equal and that
they perceived conceptual development to occur at different times depending on the types. Allen,
Baker and Ramsden (1986) conducted a survey of students’ perceptions about the guided inquiry
laboratory in improving reasoning skills for military academy students. Students acknowledged
that the guided inquiry experiments were more difficult but more effective in terms of interest,
development of analytical thinking ability, and problem solving than verification experiments.
However, all of these researches were for college level students and didn’t mention about what
Lee’s conceptual understanding 9they learned from the experiments.
Thus, I will create a learning environment for high school students that is supposed
to facilitate conceptual change by employing guided-inquiry experiments, and find out if this
approach is helpful for students to understand content knowledge.
Theoretical framework
Understanding scientific knowledge often requires a change in what people notice
and understand about everyday phenomena (NRC, 2005). Although learners make sense of
scientific knowledge, it is the teacher who is responsible for providing an effective learning
environment to promote their conceptual changes (Driver et al., 1994; NRC, 2005; Singer et al.,
2000; Vosniadou et al., 2001) Consequently, to create a learning environment that allows students
to undergo important changes in their thinking and understanding, first I need to research the
roles of prior knowledge in students’ learning process. Second, I need to study about the learning
process, especially the theory of conceptual change. Third, I need to review the features of guided
inquiry as a way.
Roles of prior knowledge
Prior knowledge is a kind of preconceptions. According to research, everybody, even
young infants, has preconceptions and these preconceptions shape subsequent learning. New
understandings are constructed on a foundation of existing understandings and experiences.
Lee’s conceptual understanding 10Students come to the science classroom with preconceptions about how the world works. If their
initial understanding is not engaged, they may fail to grasp the new concepts and information, or
they may learn them for purposes of a test (NRC, 2005). Indeed, the roles prior knowledge plays
in science learning can be considered as both necessary and problematic (Fisher, 2004; Taber,
2001).
One aspect of prior knowledge is a foundation for learning that should be mastered
before new information is to be taught (Fisher, 2004; Taber, 2001). Appropriate prior knowledge
provides an anchor to assimilate new knowledge into cognitive structure (Roshelle, 1995; Taber,
2001). In this sense, prior knowledge is preinstructional knowledge that students have learned
from the prior formal educations (Leach & Scott, 2003; Taber, 2001). In science, the degree of
sequential dependence of the content is so great that the role of prior knowledge is seen as a
starting point for subsequent learning. Fensham (1972) argued that because knowledge has
logical and psychological links, the possibility of sequential and vertical transfer of learning
would be enhanced by suitable arrangements and presentations. Therefore, in order for
meaningful learning to take place, it is necessary both for the learner to hold some relevant
prerequisite knowledge, and for the teacher to activate and ‘make the connection’ of prior
knowledge to new concepts to help the learner recognize its relevance. If either of these
conditions is not met, then rote learning will take place (Taber, 2001).
Lee’s conceptual understanding 11The other aspect of prior knowledge is a barrier to learning that should be confronted
and restructured in order for scientific knowledge to be understood (Fisher, 2004; Roschelle,
1995; Taber, 2001). Research shows that it is very common for students to enter science
classroom already holding ideas that are relevant to the topic being taught, but at odds with
accepted curriculum knowledge (Fensham, 1972; Driver et al, 1994; Fisher, 2004; Taber, 2001)
These ideas come from not only the pervious instruction but also the intuitive ideas that students
have developed from everyday experiences (Driver et al, 1994; Fisher, 2004; Taber, 2001).
Fensham (1972) pointed out that the learner’s prior knowledge could be a wrong anchor that
causes misunderstanding of new knowledge. In addition, the preconceptions can lead students to
simply not notice, quickly dismiss, or not believe what they do not expect to see (NRC, 2005;
Roschelle, 1995).
However, Roschelle (1995) maintained that prior knowledge be properly understood
not as causes of errors or success, but rather as the raw material that conditions all learning.
Teachers should support students in activating and restructuring prior knowledge so that it can be
used flexibly to make sense of and appreciate the world around them (NRC, 2005). Student
performance improves when instructions are designed to deal with specific difficulties revealed
in studies of students' prior knowledge. Leach and Scott (2003) advised that the teaching
sequence be designed on the basis of a detailed conceptual analysis of the science to be taught
Lee’s conceptual understanding 12and students' typical prior knowledge. Through this analysis, curricular goals can be identified
and teaching activities designed and evaluated.
Diagnosing prior knowledge
When students are asked to elicit their ideas about science phenomena, they have an
opportunity to articulate and clarify their ideas and to be motivated to find the correct science
views. Providing tools, activities and learning environments for representing prior knowledge can
enable learners to reflect more systematically on prior knowledge (Roschelle, 1995). Fisher
(2004) proposed that for students to effectively express their prior knowledge, three conditions be
met. First, students must be generating knowledge from their heads, without reference to texts or
other instructional materials. Second, they must feel free to express their thoughts, knowing they
will not be graded with respect to scientific correctness. Third, they must be sufficiently familiar
with the tool so as to be able to express their knowledge effectively. Under these conditions,
students are willing to include personal as well as objective knowledge.
This research serve the tools as forms of the pretest and the worksheets of inquiry
labs to uncover the students’ prior knowledge. Especially, inquiry-based instruction is used to
probe students’ prior knowledge by asking students to make hypotheses or predictions about the
driving and subquestions and to give a qualitative explanation about data analysis on the
worksheets. It is important that the questions should ask students to express their understanding,
Lee’s conceptual understanding 13not factual knowledge and the ability of mathematical calculations (Fisher, 2004; Taber, 2001;
Harrison & Treagust, 2001). The prior knowledge revealed in this research informs me and other
teachers what to prepare for remedial instructions on the concept of metal.
The concept of conceptual understanding
Since the negative role of prior knowledge in science learning was revealed, science
education community have made attempts to restructure problematic prior knowledge using
remedial instructions. Teachers explicitly challenged students’ alternative ideas by focusing on
discrepancy or anomaly that were difficult to explain in students’ existing schemes, or by
exploring any logical faults or limitations that could be overcome by adopting the scientific view.
Posner (as cited in Harrison & Treagust, 2001) explained the conceptual change focusing on the
incompatibility between two distinct and equally well-organized explanatory systems, one of
which need to be abandoned in favor of the other. In the conceptual change model, student
dissatisfaction with a preconception was believed to initiate dramatic conceptual change. If the
learner is dissatisfied with his/her prior conception and a replacement conception is available,
accommodation of the new conception may follow. Consequently, the classical meaning of
conceptual change was a revolutionary exchange of pre-instructional conceptions for the science
concepts (Appleton, 1997; Duit & Treagust, 2003; Vosniadou et al., 2001).
On the contrary, the results of recent studies suggest that conceptual change is
Lee’s conceptual understanding 14evolutionary. Conceptual change is a slow revision of an initial conceptual system through the
gradual incorporation of elements of the scientific explanations, and there seems to be many
learning paths from students’ prior knowledge to the science concepts to be learned. As a result,
the term ‘conceptual change’ is now used to describe the complex process of learning in such
domains where the pre-instructional conceptual structures of the learners have to be
fundamentally restructured in order to allow understanding of the intended knowledge (Appleton,
1997; Duit & Treagust, 2003; Vosniadou et al., 2001).
Thus, in this paper, conceptual change, conceptual understanding, knowledge
acquisition, and conceptual development are utilized to express the same meaning as the science
learning process.
The process of conceptual change
Student knowledge of important concepts can range from rote learning to deep
relational understanding. Conceptual change can happen at a number of levels, but in general,
student learning involves three different depths of changes. Most commonly, learners assimilate
additional experience to their current theories and practices without conflict. This is called
knowledge accretion. However, somewhat less frequently, an experience causes a small cognitive
shock that leads the learner to put ideas together differently. This is weak knowledge
restructuring or conceptual capture called by Hewson (as cited in Harrison & Treagust, 2001).
Lee’s conceptual understanding 15Much more rarely, learners undertake major transformations of thought that affect everything
from fundamental assumptions to their ways of seeing, conceiving, and talking about their
experience. This is called strong/radical knowledge restructuring or conceptual understanding,
which is accommodation of new concept. While rare, this third kind of change is most profound
and highly valued in science education (Harrison & Treagust, 2001; Rochelle, 1995; Vosniadou et
al., 2001).
Investigation of students’ conceptual changes
Conceptual change should be monitored in a qualitative way. Researches evidence
that students who were good at solving questions by computing, when asked to think
qualitatively about conceptions, were basing their thinking on ideas that were reasonable from
their everyday perspective which were discrepant from scientific views (NRC, 2005). It was only
when their conceptual structure was probed in multiple ways that the differences in their
understanding emerged. Understanding conceptual development needs information collected
from independent perspectives; for example, classroom interactions, pretests and posttests,
problem solving, modeling and practical activities, open-ended essays and interviews. The use of
composite data from at least some of these sources enhances the quality of conceptual
assessments because different tasks activate different processes and levels of understanding
(Harrison & Treagust, 2001; Duit & Treagust, 2003).
Lee’s conceptual understanding 16For this study, the comparison of the pre and post tests and the analysis of lab
worksheets are used to monitor and interpret students’ learning.
Laboratory for conceptual change
For instruction to be successful, it is important to select an appropriate type of
laboratory to its purpose (Domin, 2007). In this study, my purpose of using guided inquiry
laboratory is to promote understanding of content knowledge, not inquiry itself. Some types of
laboratory activity proved to be effective in inducing conceptual change by identifying prior
knowledge and providing discrepancy and anomaly. Learning cycle model (Sunel, n.d.) and
Predictive-Observe-Explain (POE) (Liew & Treagust, 1998) were attempts to use the laboratory
activities with concrete objects for this purpose. Guided inquiry-based teaching also supports
students in their conceptual changes because investigation involves the interaction of content and
process (NRC, 2005). It may appear to be more about process because what students observe is a
function of when, how, and with what tools we choose to observe. At the same time, what
students observe is also a function of what they expect to observe, and how they interpret their
observation is clearly influenced by what they already know and believe about the physical world
(NRC, 2005).
The concept of guided inquiry laboratory
The nature of laboratory instruction is important because it determines the learning
Lee’s conceptual understanding 17environment that may lead to different learning outcomes (Domin, 2007; Vosniadou et al., 2001).
There may be many types of laboratory instruction, but Domin (2001, 2007) offered the useful
taxonomy of laboratory instruction styles to highlight the distinguishing features of each style. In
his classification of laboratory instruction, he focused on three descriptors: outcome, approach,
and procedure; there were four distinct styles of laboratory instruction: expository, inquiry,
discovery, and problem-based.
According to Domin’s taxonomy, the guided-inquiry (discovery) laboratory is a
heuristic approach in which the outcome of experiment is predetermined by the teacher, but
students don’t know the expected outcome; its inductive nature help students develop a general
understanding of the underlying concepts by studying a specific example of a phenomenon
(Domin, 2001; Domin, 2007). However, there seems to be some dispute about the procedure in
the guided inquiry. Domin (2001, 2007) argued that the procedure of experiments was given by
the teacher or a manual, but Colburn (2000) insisted in his classification of inquiry that it should
be devised by the students because he has another type of inquiry– structured inquiry that is
similar to discovery lab of Domin’s taxonomy. However, I found there could be a variation about
the procedure depending on the ability of students. College students generated procedures, but
secondary students were given by the instructor (Allen et al., 1986; Domin, 2001; Colburn, 2000;
NRC, 2005).
Lee’s conceptual understanding 18Monteyne and Cracolice (2004) pointed, “A key element of guided inquiry is that
data analysis is left to the student, but not the data collection (p.1159).” The process of analysis is
precisely what defines inquiry and creates an environment in which students have the opportunity
to develop their thinking skills and conceptual understandings. It is also critical to have a
knowledgeable laboratory instructor who can mediate students’ thinking skills development and
knowledge acquisition (Monteyne & Cracolice, 2004).
Advantages of guided inquiry laboratory
Free inquiry is desirable, but when understanding requires careful attention and
logical development, guided inquiry is best, especially when the teacher is responsible for the
learning of 30 or more students (NRC, 2005). Besides, the ability and cognitive developmental
level of students should be taken into consideration when specific type of laboratory instruction is
chosen (Charlton, 1980; Colburn, 2000; Vosniadou et al., 2001). Structured discovery laboratory
was reported to be advantageous for embracing students of diverse abilities and cognitive
developmental stages (Ault, 2002; Charlton, 1980). In fact, both students and teachers alike need
time to gradually make a transition from the traditional type activities and lectures to inquiry-
based instruction. The more familiar the activity, materials, and context of the investigation, the
easier it is for students to learn through inquiry (Colburn, 2000). Particularly, when students are
not familiar with chemical experiments in inquiry-based laboratory, the chemistry lab should be
Lee’s conceptual understanding 19structured with clear and safe instructions that increase their chance of success (Monteyne &
Cracolice, 2004). In brief, since the students in this study are lack of experience with inquiry and
deal with chemicals, the guided inquiry-based laboratory is suitable choice for my instructional
mode.
Asking questions in guided-inquiry based laboratory
In a guided inquiry activity, although students make observations and reach
conclusions, it is a teacher who guides students with relevant questions that foster student
thinking (NRC, 2005). Learning objectives are usually presented as open-ended, or divergent,
questions. Activities are centered around questions that students can answer directly via
investigation. To keep students thinking, teachers should not give answers but present
opportunities for students to test their answers (Colburn, 2000). In addition, Ault (2002) argued
that the procedure was a point of departure of investigation and if used thoughtfully, it could
develop skills and provide insight. The word “thoughtfully” implies the teacher should ask such
questions as “Why do we need to do that?” or “What are some different things you could try with
that procedure?” to provoke students’ thought.
In this study, an array of open-ended questions that require higher levels of reasoning
will be employed in students’ handouts in order to guide students’ activities and to collect
qualitative data for the research.
Lee’s conceptual understanding 20Method
Participants
The participants of this action research are 180 students of 11th grade from 6 classes
of a high school in Seoul, Korea. They are both male and female. They are taught Chemistry I
two periods (50 minutes for one period) a week.
Context of study
This is my action research to improve my pedagogical content knowledge, but I am
not able to teach in a classroom for such a long term because Korean government made me study,
not teach, for two years. Therefore, I asked a friend of mine who teaches Chemistry I in a high
school in Seoul, Korea to help me with this research. She has the same educational background
and teaching experience as mine. I will provide her with guided-inquiry based laboratory
activities that I designed with detailed directions. Actually, this is one of reasons why I chose
guided-inquiry based laboratory as a topic. If other teacher gives lecture to the students with my
direction, it is not my action that affects the result of the study because lecturing involves too
many variables to be controlled.
For this study, I just focus on the laboratory activities, not classroom teaching. From
the unit, four student experiments was chosen and will be carried out sequentially in successive
weeks. After each lab activity the students will be given lecture to complement student’ learning
Lee’s conceptual understanding 21from lab activity with more explanations and to cover the other relevant topics. Thus, whole
instruction can be similar to learning cycle (Colburn, 2000). However, during the laboratory
experiments students will be introduced to not only the developing concept but also the terms and
the usefulness and application of the concepts because it is the lab activities where the students
develop understanding of the concepts.
Subject and unit
The curricular purpose of Chemistry I is to promote scientific literacy with a context-
based approach as an introductory chemistry course for Korean high school. Chemistry I is taught
for 11th grade students and consists of five units: Air, Water, Metal, Carbon compounds, and
Compounds in our life. As a result, it is easy to teach based on inquiry. This study focuses on the
unit Metal. The unit Metal includes concepts about metallic bond, periodic table, and oxidation-
reduction of metal. However, these concepts will be taught again in Chemistry II with more focus
on the theoretical structure. In Chemistry I, the unit Metal emphasizes the applications in our life,
and thus properties, the uses, refining, corrosion, protecting methods, recycling, and alloys.
Topics of Student experiments
To develop competence in an area of inquiry, students must understand facts and
ideas in the context of a conceptual framework (NRC, 2005). The main target concept which
other concepts are around is called driving question, and subquestions are questions that are used
Lee’s conceptual understanding 22in each activity as an instructional objective. Driving question is “How would you define metal in
terms of chemistry?” that ask the concept of metal. Subquestions are below
Are sodium, potassium and calcium metals? (The characteristics of metal)
How do metals react with other substances? (The activity series of metals)
How do metals react with other metals? (Plating and alloy)
How can metal be protected from corrosion? (The conditions of corrosion)
The Procedure (Timeline)
Analyzing the unit to extract the learning objectives and design the pretest
during June 2007.
Conducting the pretest to measure students’ level of understanding prior to
instructions, to collect information about student’s prior knowledge, and thus to
design the guided-inquiry laboratory during July, 2007.
Implementing guided four inquiry lab activities and collecting students’
worksheets from the labs from the end of August through September 2007.
Conducting the posttest to measure students’ level of understanding after
finishing the unit at the beginning of October 2007.
Administrating survey to find out the attitude toward guided inquiry-based
instruction at the beginning of October 2007.
Lee’s conceptual understanding 23Implement of experiment activity
To guide students through the activities, I will give them structured procedures and
ask them a series of questions with the handouts that I made. Students make hypotheses about the
driving and subquestions, conduct experimentation, analyze data, and draw conclusions by
discussing with other students in the same group.
During the investigation the teacher’s role is to monitor students’ use of materials
and interactions with others, as well as attend to the conceptual ideas with which students are
working. If the teacher judges that the students’ activity is so off the mark that the targeted
learning goals will be sacrificed, she will provide prompt corrective feedback.
Data Collection
Qualitative methodology is a powerful tool for enhancing our understanding of
teaching and learning, and uses a naturalistic approach that seek to understand phenomena in
content specific settings. One source of information that can be invaluable to qualitative research
is analysis of documents (Hoepfl, 1997). My research will rely heavily on analysis of student
documents, including the pretest and the posttest that are based on the learning objectives on
the unit, the survey of students’ attitude toward guided inquiry laboratory, and the lab
worksheets from four students’ experiments. In those documents, open-ended questions allow
the students unlimited choices, and provide me with a more accurate sense of what they are
Lee’s conceptual understanding 24actually thinking (Johnson, 2007).
However, for the survey, I will take both qualitative and quantitative approach to
collect data. The purpose of the students’ survey is to find out the attitudes toward guided
inquiry-based instruction, and thus determine the effectiveness of my instruction on students’
learning. With such a huge number of data (180 students), quantitative analysis will give this
study reliable information about their attitudes. On the other hand, students are required to write
their opinion how helpful and useful my teaching strategy was. This qualitative data will provide
various and insightful information to decide my future teaching strategy.
Data Analysis
I will take two approaches toward the analysis of the data.
One is focused on the objective nature of the research. After coding the data of each
open-ended question in the documents, I will create a table of code scheme for each question to
organize the categories so that I can find out the overall tendency across the students. The tables
consist of categories, brief description of them, dominant examples, and the frequency (the
number of data in each category) to provide audience with meaningful information about the
students’ prior knowledge concerning metal and their perception about guided inquiry
experiments. This process can be seen as a transformation of qualitative data into quantitative
data. Quantitative analysis facilitates both the researcher and audience in obtaining an overview
Lee’s conceptual understanding 25or flavor of densely packed qualitative data (Gough & Scott, 2000). The tables will show the
distribution among the categories of qualitative data. The lists of prior knowledge may have some
meanings in itself, but when the frequency is provided, the teacher and audience can find out the
dominant obstacles to the promoting conceptual change in teaching practices. Furthermore, with
the comparison between the pretest result and the posttest result, or between hypotheses and
conclusions in the lab papers, I can determine the effectiveness of the lab activities in promoting
conceptual change.
On the other hand, I will generate ‘a loose network’, which is suggested by Gough &
Scott (2000), to represent the flow of thoughts for some group of students. One of my research
purposes is to monitor the students’ conceptual change over time. To achieve this goal, the
requirement is to record and display ideas that will arise in students’ written data, and links
between them. Concept mapping is useful to detect students’ prior knowledge and follow the
conceptual change, but it takes a great deal of time to get used to drawing them. Thus, the loose
network will be concept maps that are drawn by the researcher based on the data, in which coded
data will be signified by a word or words the students actually use. If a student’s own words are
compressed into a category signified by a word supplied by the researcher, care will be taken to:
ensure the appropriateness of the chosen signifier (by, for example, comparing that
student’s words with those used by other students who employ the chosen signifier);
Lee’s conceptual understanding 26 employ as many other categories as seem necessary to convey the full content of that
student’s words;
ensure consistency in the making of such decisions by critical selfexamination
(Gough & Scott, 2000).
Lee’s conceptual understanding 27References
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Ault, A. (2002). What’s wrong with cookbooks?, Journal of Chemical Education, 79(10), 1177.
Charlton, R. E., (1980). Teacher-To-Teacher: Cognitive Style Considerations for the
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