Teaching Teachers to Teach Scientific Inquiry and Modeling is a new research project that aims to develop new approaches to the teaching of scientific inquiry skills and to prepare middle school teachers to adopt them.The project calls for researchers to develop special computer software that will then be used to create instructional activities for the project. The new software also will enable students and teachers to create their own scientific models and activities.
This work is part of a larger goal to make possible a new kind of middle school science curriculum that is solidly grounded in advances in cognitive science, makes effective use of interactive computer activities, and makes possible the teaching of science integrated with the teaching of scientific inquiry and reasoning skills.
This project builds on the success of previous research that produced a sixth grade curriculum module, and computer software called ThinkerTools that was used to teach scientific inquiry skills. Using the materials, students learned how forces affect motion through a series of interactive computer simulations. They also learned to evaluate physical "laws" devised by themselves and others to describe their simulations and to apply these laws to real situations.
The project is funded by the James S. McDonnell Foundation. Barbara Y. White is principal investigator.