After having heard the view points expressed in De Jong et tal (2024) and Sweller et tal (2024), it made me wonder about another important factor when it comes to choosing a particular instructional approach as a classroom teacher: time allocation. Time is an important resource, and there is so much content to teach in Science (and in other academic subjects too), so as a science classroom teacher, I would favor an instructional approach that would be most effective at transmitting a body of knowledge in the shortest amount of time possible. The quicker the knowledge is passed on from the teacher to students, the more time is then allocated to independent practice/extension activities in class which I hope everyone will agree it to be a good thing for students' learning outcomes. In contrast, I would expect that transmitting a body of knowledge via guided inquiry model would by design take more time, taking away precious time in class from students to engage in further practice and consolidation as well as covering more content. Please point out if I am wrong on this, but I could not find De Jong et tal (2023) and De Jong et tal (2024) addressing the potential issue of guided inquiry learning being time inefficient and is therefore impractical to be used in most school settings.
If you didn't believe Hawthorn le Effect (or something like it) is at work, then how would you account for the fact that diametrically opposed interventions routinely show positive effects? I can see how it's hard to find a single smoking gun metric to measure its prevalence, but i don't know how you could look at the aggregate and not see it. Where are all the studies showing null results? They should be at least half. If it's not a Hawthorne-like effect, then it's desk drawer bias, and that's much worse.
I think a key distinction in inquiry-based instruction is to what extent students are expected to come up with plausible models of, for example, kinetic theory based on their own experience. (version 1)
Contrast that with presenting kinetic theory and helping students interpret that based on their experience (version 2). Version 1 is said to contribute to the student's "agency" or the sense that their ideas are valued.
The teacher in Version 1 asks for predictions and observations of a phenomena. The students are to look for patterns and use those patterns to produce a model which the class much reach consensus on. it is not clear what happens if the consensus model is not the correct model. Advocates of Version 1 note that the students require "scaffolding" by the teacher to arrive at the correct model.
I have had little luck with Version 1 on a high school level. and follow Version 2. My own sense of student "agency" is that a student's agency is increased when the student can correctly apply a new concept, principle, or theory. To ask students to invent plausible theories seems more like a "guess what I am thinking" game of the teacher where the student has insufficient prior knowledge to produce plausible theories or models.
I guess the idea that you could contact each other and ask questions doesn’t occur here. I think you should be clear in offering that option. The journal editors seem happy to have a never ending back and forth. But why not invite them here or send them a draft before publication. Anything to cut down on the misunderstanding and talking by the other side.
I don’t think there’ll be any more back and forth. I think de Jong II will be the final paper in this series. I understand de Jong has been contacted about a debate eg at a conference but that this has not been welcomed at this stage.
They are clearly too invested in their position to address its weaknesses. Another issue with meta studies is that as you point out for non novices an inquiry approach can be effective. So any meta analysis has to check the individual results are applicable to novices.
I think I’ve said before I think it is worth you and other explicit instruction advocates writing in detail about what effective inquiry looks like. It would refine the issue to a question of measuring novice verses mastery levels and what inquiry for masters in a high school setting looks like.
After having heard the view points expressed in De Jong et tal (2024) and Sweller et tal (2024), it made me wonder about another important factor when it comes to choosing a particular instructional approach as a classroom teacher: time allocation. Time is an important resource, and there is so much content to teach in Science (and in other academic subjects too), so as a science classroom teacher, I would favor an instructional approach that would be most effective at transmitting a body of knowledge in the shortest amount of time possible. The quicker the knowledge is passed on from the teacher to students, the more time is then allocated to independent practice/extension activities in class which I hope everyone will agree it to be a good thing for students' learning outcomes. In contrast, I would expect that transmitting a body of knowledge via guided inquiry model would by design take more time, taking away precious time in class from students to engage in further practice and consolidation as well as covering more content. Please point out if I am wrong on this, but I could not find De Jong et tal (2023) and De Jong et tal (2024) addressing the potential issue of guided inquiry learning being time inefficient and is therefore impractical to be used in most school settings.
If you didn't believe Hawthorn le Effect (or something like it) is at work, then how would you account for the fact that diametrically opposed interventions routinely show positive effects? I can see how it's hard to find a single smoking gun metric to measure its prevalence, but i don't know how you could look at the aggregate and not see it. Where are all the studies showing null results? They should be at least half. If it's not a Hawthorne-like effect, then it's desk drawer bias, and that's much worse.
Good point. As Hattie has suggested, everything works. Why?
I think a key distinction in inquiry-based instruction is to what extent students are expected to come up with plausible models of, for example, kinetic theory based on their own experience. (version 1)
Contrast that with presenting kinetic theory and helping students interpret that based on their experience (version 2). Version 1 is said to contribute to the student's "agency" or the sense that their ideas are valued.
The teacher in Version 1 asks for predictions and observations of a phenomena. The students are to look for patterns and use those patterns to produce a model which the class much reach consensus on. it is not clear what happens if the consensus model is not the correct model. Advocates of Version 1 note that the students require "scaffolding" by the teacher to arrive at the correct model.
I have had little luck with Version 1 on a high school level. and follow Version 2. My own sense of student "agency" is that a student's agency is increased when the student can correctly apply a new concept, principle, or theory. To ask students to invent plausible theories seems more like a "guess what I am thinking" game of the teacher where the student has insufficient prior knowledge to produce plausible theories or models.
I guess the idea that you could contact each other and ask questions doesn’t occur here. I think you should be clear in offering that option. The journal editors seem happy to have a never ending back and forth. But why not invite them here or send them a draft before publication. Anything to cut down on the misunderstanding and talking by the other side.
I don’t think there’ll be any more back and forth. I think de Jong II will be the final paper in this series. I understand de Jong has been contacted about a debate eg at a conference but that this has not been welcomed at this stage.
They are clearly too invested in their position to address its weaknesses. Another issue with meta studies is that as you point out for non novices an inquiry approach can be effective. So any meta analysis has to check the individual results are applicable to novices.
I think I’ve said before I think it is worth you and other explicit instruction advocates writing in detail about what effective inquiry looks like. It would refine the issue to a question of measuring novice verses mastery levels and what inquiry for masters in a high school setting looks like.