Scientific inquiry in complex data-rich environments is a goal of much educational reform, but students require supports to manage the complexity of such investigations. We propose an approach to providing this support by making the processes and products of an investigation into explicit objects for reflection. We describe design research exploring ways to promote reflective inquiry among middle-school and high-school science students. We outline obstacles facing students in conducting investigations and give an overview of the design principles for our inquiry-support software environment, the Progress Portfolio. The specific tools provided by the Progress Portfolio for capturing, annotating, organizing, and presenting data are described in detail. We conclude with a discussion of pilot studies conducted with middle-school and high-school students.

ABSTRACT: A main goal of science education is to help students learn to reason scientifically. A main way to facilitate learning is to engage students in inquiry activities such as conducting experiments. This article presents a theoretical framework for evaluating inquiry tasks in terms of how similar they are to authentic science. The framework helps identify the respects in which these reasoning tasks are similar to and different from real scientific research. The framework is based on a recent theory of reasoning, models-of-data theory. We argue that inquiry tasks commonly used in schools evoke reasoning processes that are qualitatively different from the processes employed in real scientific inquiry. Moreover, school reasoning tasks appear to be based on an epistemology that differs from the epistemology of authentic science. Inquiry tasks developed by researchers have increasingly captured features of authentic science, but further improvement is still possible. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our analysis for research, assessment, and instruction.

1 This document is a work product developed by Dr. Richard Clark of the University of Southern California and submitted to satisfy contract DAAD 19-99-D-0046-0004 from TRADOC to the Institute for Creative Technology and the Rossier School of Education to provide “Workshops-TDAD ” under account number 53-4400-8040. The opinions expressed in this document are those of the Principle Investigator and not those of TRADOC or the University of Southern California. 1

The present study discusses findings that replicate and extend the original work of Burns and Vollmeyer (2002), which showed that performance in problem solving tasks was more accurate when people were engaged in a non-specific goal than in a specific goal. The main innovation here was to examine the goal specificity effect under both observation-based and conventional action-based learning conditions. The findings show that goal specificity affects the accuracy of problem solving in the same way, both when the learning stage of the task is observationbased and when it is action-based. Additionally, the findings show that, when instructions do not promote goal specificity, observation-based problem solving is as effective as action-based problem solving. 2 Keywords: Problem solving; Skill acquisition and learning; Observation vs. intervention

Walk into many classrooms today and look at the way the students are being taught, and you might think that the instructor is trying to pour knowledge into their studentsÕ heads, as represented in Figure 1(a). The students are passively listening to a lecture, or watching a demonstration, and they might appear to be soaking up everything the teacher says. Figure 1(b) [adapted from A. Van Heuvelen, 1992] is actually closer to what is really going on in many classrooms. The students are again passive, but little of the knowledge is retained. For instance, the teacher might be surprised when students donÕt understand something after it is told to them once or twice. Or perhaps students consistently perform below expectations on quizzes, tests, and exams. This representation is somewhat flawed, however, because it assumes that efficient communication is occurring in the classroom and it blames the students for any failures to understand. Figure 1(c) shows our view of common instructional practices, and there are two features worth noting. First, the finger in the ear means that students are trying to retain the knowledge but, lacking the skills needed to do so, fail. Listening to lectures, taking notes and studying them, reading textbooks, memorizing formulas, doing problems, etc. are not sufficient for

The role of action has been strongly emphasized, not only in cognitive research on learning and problem solving, but also in education and instructional psychology. The Constructivism tradition has long asserted that action plays a crucial role for learners in constructing their own knowledge. In an educational context, active engagement entails students examining their own ideas, considering alternative explanations for newly taught concepts, and evaluating competing perspectives. Some theorists (e.g., Anzai & Simon, 1979) propose that these processes are found when learning is by doing. However, a constructivist perspective implies that instructional formats enable self-monitoring (e.g., Covington, 2000; Pintrich & De Groot, 1990), which includes reflective activities such as describing, explaining, and evaluative thinking (e.g., Covington, 2000; Zimmerman, 1990), which are not exclusive to action. The present article discusses findings that concern two related and thus far, unexplored two questions: How affective is observation-based learning in a complex skill learning task that usually requires processes that involve active engagement with it? How does monitoring affect the transfer of problem solving ability in complex skill learning task? The first aim of the article is to introduce ways of using common educational tools like the self-observation technique, which involves re-exposing individuals to their own self-generated behaviors, in novel ways that can provides insight into how people use self-regulatory mechanisms like monitoring on internally represented behaviors. The second aim is provide support for the view that in the absence of active learning, learning indirectly (i.e. Observation-based learning) is a practical and in some cases necessary method of knowledge and skill acquisition, and does not in turn lead to decrements in acquired knowledge and skill. Finally, the article presents the argument that the degree of self-monitoring that takes place may be a mediating factor in preserving the view that action has a special status in knowledge acquisition.

Causal learning requires integrating constraints provided by domain-specific theories with domaingeneral statistical learning. In order to investigate the interaction between these factors, the authors presented preschoolers with stories pitting their existing theories against statistical evidence. Each child heard 2 stories in which 2 candidate causes co-occurred with an effect. Evidence was presented in the

Don’t teach me 2 + 2 equals 4: Knowledge of arithmetic operations hinders equation learning This study investigated whether children’s knowledge of arithmetic operations hinders their ability to solve novel equations after instruction. Second- and third-grade children completed a timed arithmetic pretest as a means for assessing their proficiency with arithmetic operations. Next, they received lessons on the principle of mathematical equivalence either in a context designed to activate their knowledge of arithmetic operations (e.g., 15 + 13 = 28), or in a context designed to not activate their knowledge of arithmetic operations (e.g., 28 = 28). Then, children completed an equation-solving posttest (e.g., 3 + 9 + 5 = 6 + __). After the posttest, children switched lesson contexts and completed the posttest again. Children solved more equations incorrectly after receiving lessons in the operational context. Additionally, the operational context led children who were most proficient with arithmetic operations to solve more equations using the typical addition strategy of adding up all the numbers. Results highlight that the activation of existing knowledge can interfere with the acquisition of new information. Some domains of knowledge are particularly difficult for people to learn, even after significant amounts of training or instruction. There are many examples of this in our formal education system, including reading, mathematics, science, and foreign language. Over the past several years, a number of scientists (e.g., Flege,

Evidence for the superiority of guided instruction is explained in the context of our knowledge of human cognitive architecture, expert-novice differences, and cognitive load. While unguided or minimally-guided instructional approaches are very popular and intuitively appealing, the point is made that these approaches ignore both the structures that constitute human cognitive architecture and evidence from empirical studies over the past half century that consistently indicate that minimally-guided instruction is less effective and less efficient than instructional approaches that place a strong emphasis on guidance of the student learning process. The advantage of guidance begins to recede only when learners have sufficiently high prior knowledge to provide ‘internal ’ guidance. Recent developments in instructional research and instructional design models that support guidance during instruction are briefly described.

Doing inquiry is a challenge for both students and teachers. To be successful in inquiry, students need to learn to be reflective inquirers, that is, to document, organize, and discuss the content and the process of their investigation, and to monitor and reflect on this process. We are developing a tool, called the Progress Portfolio, to help students learn to be reflective inquirers by making it easy to create concrete artifacts that represent their inquiry process. These artifacts provide an object for reflection and conversations about the investigative process. In this paper we describe two case studies of students using the Progress Portfolio as a way to highlight and explore aspects of reflective inquiry, in particular, the ways in which creating these artifacts could afford reflection throughout the course of the inquiry process. We describe the instructional strategies employed by the teacher and the Progress Portfolio to help students create and use these artifacts. We found ...