How Does a Forest Work?
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Inquiry Lessons on Forest Ecology
for Inquiry Novices or the Inquiry-Resistant 
by the Hope/ AIRE Team of Toucan Project 1999

I. Who we are and who we wrote this for

If you have heard about inquiry labs but have resisted doing them until now ... If you have done a few inquiry exercises but haven't had time to do more ... we had you in mind when we created these pages. Educational change involves risk, and the individual classroom teacher often gets to take the most risk. We're hoping we've lowered the level of risk enough that the rewards of inquiry will be worth seeking.

More than 20 years ago, Estelle Tafoya defined inquiry as a strategy for teaching that is devoid of authoritarian answers to science questions; provides empirical verification by students of knowledge claims made in curricular materials; involves active student investigation with diverse materials in a variety of educational settings; includes active student participation ...; and involves the complete inquiry process.  Inquiry of this sort continues to be admired and recommended, and the strategy has become an essential part of the National Standards. Inquiry appears here to stay.

Hope College faculty in the Natural Sciences have long believed in the value of original research (the ultimate inquiry) as a valuable part of a complete science education and have long been recognized for their accomplishments in this kind of research-based education. Hope College has also been committed to outreach which contributes to the improvement of science education Therefore, it was natural that a significant portion of Hope's 1998 NSF-AIRE award would be allocated for producing college-high school partnerships that aid teachers in their use of inquiry in the class room. The first AIRE workshop, held July 6 - 14, 1999, was designed to create inquiry materials for high school biology.

Twelve accomplished and enthusiastic teachers were invited to Hope College to learn about research done in the cloud forests of Costa Rica by Hope College biologists Greg Murray and Kathy Winnett-Murray. The teachers also visited one of the hardwood climax dune forests of western Michigan. The big biology question we asked was, How does a forest work? The big teaching question became, How can we create a learning environment for students so they can find out how a forest works?

We invited Howard Waterman, a high school biology teacher for more than 30 years, and now a consultant on inquiry associated with Washington State University, to help us reach a deeper understanding of inquiry methods. He helped us to see what conditions are necessary for inquiry to happen, of which more is said later. We are convinced that inquiry is a good strategy, but it is only one of many teaching strategies available to teachers. To be good teachers, our task is to know what goals are most supported by inquiry and to use it appropriately.

This is not a complete guide to inquiry, nor is it meant necessarily to increase what the already overloaded biology teacher has to do. If you want to start with some structured or guided inquiry exercises, we've built some for you. We've also provided quite a lot of questions we've thought of that would make great starters for further inquiry.

 We perceived two distinct approaches to inquiry, each of which we've explored. Inquiry can be the content of an inquiry lesson when the primary interest is the nature of scientific investigation itself. In that case, the process is the subject being studied. Alternatively, we can teach about some area of biology using an inquiry approach. Then we have some content in mind that we want the student to discover by asking questions and seeking answers. We also learned that a whole range of possible inquiries exist, from very open ones in which the students decide on both the problem to be studied and the methods for doing so, to more guided and structured inquiry in which the teacher has more to do with the formulation of the questions, the procedures or both, but the exercises are open-ended, giving the student responsibility for discovering answers. Ours are not completely open inquiries, but we leave those for teachers to develop once they see the value of this strategy and are comfortable with it.

II. Inquiry as Content How To Ask Questions 

What does science education need to be for our scientific age? The answer that leads to inquiry-based education is encapsulated in this statement: A Teaching related to scientific literacy needs to be consistent with the spirit and character of scientific inquiry and with scientific values. This suggests such approaches as starting with questions about phenomena rather than with answers to be learned; engaging students actively in the use of hypotheses, the collection and use of evidence and the design of investigations and processes; and placing a premium on students' curiosity and creativity. Students and teachers benefit from lessons based on these principles. They learn about how science proceeds as well as learning about what science finds out. Sometimes it is useful to engage in exercises which have no other goal than to learn about inquiry. In this section, an inquiry lesson will be described, and then the lessons that can be gleaned about the character of inquiry will be considered.

 To learn more, click here!