SHOULD WE ASK OR SHOULD WE TELL?
GUIDED INQUIRY-BASED LEARNING IN BIOLOGY
I use an active inquiry-based learning environment and inductive teaching to allow students to “discover” new knowledge in a constructivist way. My goal is for students to learn and retain information while gaining skills that will help them to become life-long learners. My experience teaching freshman through senior level courses has taught me that students are highly motivated to discover new things and, with guidance, are able to learn new content by utilizing their knowledge base in combination with new observations. Using a combination of mini-lectures, short readings, group and class discussions, hands-on activities, and laboratory experiments, my teaching strategies meet the needs of a wide-range of students with diverse learning styles. I combine these learning strategies with a variety of assessments to keep students engaged with the material. Furthermore, this variation often allows me to set up a classroom environment that is more equitable and inclusive; allowing all students to learn, retain information, and gain confidence in their ability to communicate.
My teaching philosophy centers around increasing my students’ critical thinking skills and encouraging them to practice making connections by implementing the scientific method to gain information. Just as new scientific findings build upon previous knowledge, my students use their knowledge to make hypotheses, complete hands-on experiments/simulations, and glean the information they gained via small group and class discussions. To ensure that my students have gained a mastery of the material, I use formative and summative assessments throughout the semester. The picture above is one from a class where students used mind maps to explore how evolution concepts related to each other. This activity also served as a formative assessment and gave me the chance to observe what concepts my students had mastered and which ones we needed to explore more.
Discussion and sharing group findings with the class is another formative way in which I can evaluate how the students are interacting with the content. I also use a combination of individual and group summative assessments. I strive to design summative assessments that tests their cumulative content knowledge while applying critical thinking and communication skills to solve the problems. The critical thinking and communication skills that my students acquire will serve them well in any career they choose and are especially important in the current digital age, where new information is readily available, but may not be trustworthy or factually correct. By the time they leave my classroom, my students are able to self-critique their own work and the work of others; to critically think about different arguments, determine their plausibility, and make conclusions based on evidence.
Discussion and sharing group findings with the class is another formative way in which I can evaluate how the students are interacting with the content. I also use a combination of individual and group summative assessments. I strive to design summative assessments that tests their cumulative content knowledge while applying critical thinking and communication skills to solve the problems. The critical thinking and communication skills that my students acquire will serve them well in any career they choose and are especially important in the current digital age, where new information is readily available, but may not be trustworthy or factually correct. By the time they leave my classroom, my students are able to self-critique their own work and the work of others; to critically think about different arguments, determine their plausibility, and make conclusions based on evidence.
An example of my classroom environment and the underlying constructivist philosophy is apparent in my favorite lesson to teach: DNA replication. Before this lesson, we would have walked through various experiments so that the students know the basic structure of DNA including how nitrogenous bases pair via weak bonds. To start, I ask them to use their current knowledge to come up with ways that DNA might replicate. After a class discussion, I present them with the actual experiment where two isotopes of nitrogen were used to uncover how DNA replicates. Then I have them draw out what the DNA would look like if it replicated in the ways we discussed and what the weight densities would be for three rounds of replication. Finally, I give them the results of the actual experiment and they quickly realize how DNA replicates by comparing the results to what they expected for each possibility. In addition to allowing the students to make the “discoveries” themselves, which allows for higher retention, this style of inductive learning encourages students to collaborate with peers. In my experience, not all students have encountered this type of learning environment in a school setting. However, they quickly realize that all of them do this in everyday life. Thus, this setting engages all students and fosters learning for all. Importantly, I have observed that this learning environment promotes equity and inclusion among diverse groups of students.
Courses Taught
Danielle Herrig
[email protected]
[email protected]