Why should students learn to plan and carry out investigations in science and engineering?

What is the Issue?

Authors:

KERRI WINGERT and PHILIP BELL - APRIL 2015

Things to Consider

• Students should have opportunities to plan and conduct investigations where scientific findings are used to solve real (or realistic) everyday problems. For example, they can design stream table experiments to understand where the best place is to construct a building in a floodplain. These self-designed investigations for real purposes help students learn how to engage in the science and engineering practices and help them understand and identify with science as a way of improving the world.
• Planning and carrying out an investigation should not be limited to controlled experiments, since scientists use myriad methods to answer their questions. Scientists and engineers use observational methods, case control studies, failure analysis, and other methods to explain how the world works. Students should as well.
• Planning and carrying out an investigation does not mean “stepping through” the scientific method. In fact, scientists themselves rarely follow “steps” of inquiry as they pursue answers to questions. Students should be encouraged to argue for specific sequences of scientific practices that allow them to engage in their research.
• Engineering also involves planning and carrying out investigations to specify design criteria and to test designs. For example, a civil engineer might investigate how many people use a road before deciding if an overpass is needed. In the classroom, engineering design investigations might include conducting “fair tests” to determine the durability of building materials—or surveys of potential users or consumers of a specific design.
• Ultimately, students should be learning when to be engaging in the science and engineering practices. This is best done while they’re pursuing a question that matters to them or when they are working through uncertainties that come up during investigations.

Attending to Equity

• Young people’s experiential knowledge is deep, and this can help them design compelling investigations that are of interest to them. Students make great gains when science class time incorporates the resources they bring to class from across their lives and communities. Be sure to draw on these resources actively by making students’ knowledge public to their peers and the community.
• As students learn about new methods of investigation, they should also be asked to leverage their understanding of how to make sense of the world. Not all cultural groups investigate the world in the same way, and this variety of methods can be a tremendous asset to both the classroom and the world (see this important case).

Recommended Actions You Can Take

• Read more about the practice of planning and carrying out investigations, review the grade-band criteria for it, and watch this webinar on it (perhaps with a colleague). Read about an instructional model for this practice.
• Have students use the eight science and engineering practices as “building blocks” to develop their own investigations to conduct—and don’t use “the scientific method” as a way structuring inquiry.
• As students explore topics for which you do not know the outcome, adopt the stance of a scientifically literate learner and model how you think and make sense of students’ issues and results.
• Encourage students to track their science-related questions as they go about their lives, and support them to investigate some of these questions. Some student choice is better than none.

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