High school students’ perceptions on the relevance of inquiry-oriented instructional labs as introduction to an extended research project

Inquiry practices can be integrated into various settings that differ in terms of their constraints and hence in the scope and depth of the practices that students experience. Key policy papers suggest implementing a gradual learning sequence for inquiry practices so that students’ learning experiences in more constrained settings can serve them later in extended research projects. What type of learning progression in inquiry is valued by students? To answer this question, students’ views were examined while progressing from inquiry-oriented instructional labs to an extended research project. This was done in the context of the Research Physics program, a three-year program consisting of an introductory stage followed by a long-term ($\sim 18$ months) research project. The group administered interactive questionnaire methodology was used to collect student reflections at the interface between the two stages of the program, both individually and in groups. Students were asked to identify inquiry practices they had encountered during the introductory stage and to evaluate their contribution to their projects. Findings showed that while students perceived the development of measurement, analysis, and self-monitoring skills as useful in preparing them for future research projects, this was not the case for the practices of teamwork and communication of knowledge. We explain these findings, using the boundary crossing theoretical lens, by looking at the different meanings these two practices take on when imported from the physicist’s lab to the educational lab and suggest that this impedes the cultural boundary crossing between these two settings.

Figure 1

Step 3 of the GAIQ: students creating a unified list of inquiry tasks they encountered during the introductory stage (left) and categorizing them (right). Students used labeled tabs to facilitate the sorting process.

Figure 2

Overview of findings: correspondence between student-made and top-down categories and perceived relevance of each category.