Generating Students’ Information Seeking Questions in the Scholar Lab: What Benefits Can We Expect From Inquiry Teaching Approaches?
Tarcilo Torres 1, Beatriz Milicic 2, Carlos Soto 1, Vicente Sanjosé 3 *
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1 University of Antioquia, COLOMBIA2 National University of Rosario, ARGENTINA3 University of Valencia, SPAIN* Corresponding Author

Abstract

Physics teachers use experimental devices to show students how scientific concepts, principles, and laws are applied to understand the real world. This paper studies question generation of secondary and under-graduate university students when they are confronted with experimental devices in different but usual teaching situations: reading about devices while studying still images or diagrams, watching an experimental demonstration, and handling the devices in the laboratory. The influence of the prior scientific knowledge on the questions asked is also analysed. Inquiry learning environments, involving lab projects, seemed to stimulate more inferences addressed to causality when students tried to build mental models, whereas reading about devices with the help of still images stimulate more descriptive inferences and inhibited predictive ones.

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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Article Type: Research Article

EURASIA J Math Sci Tech Ed, Volume 9, Issue 3, 2013, 259-272

https://doi.org/10.12973/eurasia.2013.934a

Publication date: 14 Dec 2013

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Article Downloads: 1078

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