Science Education: The Why Behind the What
What is inquiry-based learning and why are some college instructors turning to it for teaching complicated scientific topics?
Published September 1, 2003
By Margaret Crane
Academy Contributor

The United States may be the world’s only superpower, but on the science and mathematics literacy front the U.S. remains very much a nation at risk, according to recent reports issued by the Office of Science Education of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Commission on Excellence in Education, and the National Research Council. Each of these organizations cites an alarming gap between the state of science education in the U.S. and the stunning challenges the nation faces – hurdles that cannot be overcome by scholars and experts alone, but that require an educated citizenry.
In addition, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reports that grade-school students in the U.S. have fallen behind their counterparts in a number of other economically advanced countries. Meanwhile, the percentage of science majors at U.S. colleges and universities continues to dwindle. Asked why they shy away from science and math, many students reply that these subjects are simply “too hard.”
It is true that the sciences are more “content-heavy” than some other disciplines, but every student should be able to experience and understand science, at least up to a point, said Francine J. Wald, a speaker at the first of three meetings this spring entitled “Why Inquiry? New Models of College Teaching Science,” administered by The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy). Wald, a physicist on the faculty of New York University’s School of Education, believes the onus for widespread science illiteracy is not on students but on science educators, who tend to privilege memorization over experiential learning.
No Misconceptions, Only Explanations
Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr., professor of physics at Boise State University and a fellow panelist at the March 21 meeting, seconded Wald’s argument: “It’s not about imparting knowledge and supplying the right answers, but inducing students to examine and reconstruct new, more effective understandings of their world.” In his view, there are no misconceptions, only explanations that don’t fit experience.

Barbara Williams, an astrophysicist on the faculty of the University of Delaware, and Fernand Brunschwig, a physics “mentor” at New York City’s Empire State College, further explained that although the inquiry approach isn’t a panacea, it represents an advance over orthodox methods in its ability to stimulate critical thinking.
The essence of inquiry can be summed up as a process that aims at understanding the “why” behind the “what.”
An audience of physics teachers received a crash course in the method when asked to observe a demonstration, discuss their ideas with others at their table, and come up with possible answers to several pointed questions.
First, an old gooseneck lamp was placed on a surface. The lamp’s 40-watt bulb housed a five-sided filament with one side open. Then, Dykstra placed a lens between the lamp and the wall and turned on the light. The resulting projected image was clearly inverted.
Fifty percent of those present believed some property of the lens had caused the image to invert. In just 15 minutes, however, some of the meeting’s participants homed in on a working explanation for the inversion, which occurs as a natural consequence of many light rays going out in all directions from each point on the filament.
Simple, Hands-On Exercises
If they had been Dykstra’s students, they would have had more time to explore the limits of the ray theory and find their way to the wave, versus particle, theory of light and to the laws of refraction, diffraction, interference and reflection that were first postulated in the 17th century. In this way, a simple, hands-on exercise can become a window into a host of contending theories, including those of Huygens, Newton, and Einstein.
Moreover, inquiry is driven by student understanding. The teacher’s role is to engage students in a process of examining the world around them in ways that challenge their existing ideas.
Small groups of proactive students are another distinguishing feature in inquiry-based classrooms. So is the use of technology – especially for math teachers in their efforts to help students make the connection between mathematics and real-world experiences. The inquiry-based math classroom resembles a workshop, where students learn by doing, then reflect on what they’ve done.
At the Academy’s second inquiry meeting, held on April 2, Nancy Baxter Hastings, professor of mathematics at Dickinson College, projected a graph onto a large screen and used a motion detector to demonstrate the nature of functions. The x-axis was labeled “time,” and the y-axis represented “distance.”
After hitting the requisite button on the instructor’s laptop, an audience member was asked to move forward and backward several times, making the blue line on the graph depicting the relationship between time and distance rise and fall with each movement. Technology can make the study of mathematics engaging, relevant, and fun, said Baxter Hastings, especially for students who believe they lack mathematical ability.
Quantitative Reasoning

To broaden and deepen the learning experience, said Stockton College’s Frank Cerreto, it’s important to show students how quantitative reasoning infuses virtually every discipline. “Students take a calculus class, then a business class where they study compound interest, and then a biology class where they study bacterial population growth, but they don’t realize that the latter two are about the same thing as calculus,” he said.
Judith McVarish, assistant professor at the Steinhardt School of Education at NYU, agreed with Cerreto’s emphasis on interdisciplinary learning as a way of encouraging students to think creatively. “School is usually about getting the right answers, not asking questions,” she said. The inquiry-oriented math teacher’s task, therefore, is to design activities that will help students think like mathematicians – that is, to explore, guess, learn from their errors, and share their ideas with peers. The aim is to nurture a community of learners, as opposed to an atomized group of students who are alternately bored, anxious, or simply going through the motions: a familiar state of affairs captured by the phrase, “Do we have to know that?”
If the word “science” provokes fear, boredom and dread in the hearts of young people, there’s something wrong with their perception – and with the origins of that perception in how science teachers teach. This was the core message of the Academy’s third session, held on May 12.
Merle S. Bruno, professor of biology at Hampshire College, embraces the inquiry approach as pivotal in changing student attitudes and educational outcomes: “We want students to be wowed and energized by science,” she said.
Innovations in Teaching Human Biology
At Hampshire, Bruno was instrumental in introducing an innovative human biology course using actual medical cases to guide students through human anatomy and physiology. “We give the students a little information about a case and let them go from there,” she said. Working in small groups of four or five, students develop three categories of questions:
– First, what do we know about the person?
– Second, what do we suspect?
– Third, what do we need to know?
Each student in the group takes responsibility for one piece of research, and after several rounds of what doctors call “differential diagnosis” – ruling out what is not happening – a diagnosis is reached. And it usually turns out to be the right one.
The Academy’s audience of science teachers had a chance to think together about a medical case, develop the three types of questions specified above, and take a shot at diagnosing the problem. It turned out to be celiac disease, a digestive condition triggered by an allergy to gluten.
Practical Problem-Solving
Along with her like-thinking colleagues in physics and mathematics, Bruno believes practical problem-solving helps students learn by upping their motivation and building self-confidence. Jeannie Drew, who heads the Science Department at Riverdale Country School in Riverdale, New York, is pioneering similar strategies in a grade-school setting. This year, her 7th-graders created a mock crime-scene lab and tested “urine” samples for excess sugar – a sure-fire way of identifying a criminal known to have diabetes.
It all sounds like great fun, skeptics may say, but is it science? Proponents of the inquiry approach respond to this query with an enthusiastic, if qualified, “yes.” They admit that the workshop-based classroom has its disadvantages. “Content always gets sacrificed,” said Drew. “Because thought and discovery come first, we spend a longer time on projects, which means we often can’t cover enough material to compete well on national tests.” But when it comes to long-term understanding and critical thinking, this approach can’t be beat.
It’s science when students learn to read studies, evaluate data, design experiments and think like scientists and mathematicians. That’s precisely what students do in an inquiry-based classroom, where a new foundation for an educated citizenry is being laid, one inquiring student at a time.
Also read: Embracing Globalization in Science Education