Scientific Inquiry Approach Analysis

The idea of a teacher helping a student’s performance through the ‘zone of proximal development’ supports this theory because it allows students to become more responsible of their own learning as well as more active in constructing their own knowledge. This happens when they actively exchange, build upon and scaffold each other’s ideas to solve problems (Atkinson & Hunt, 2008; Summers et al., 2005). In this learning environment, the teacher then becomes the ‘facilitator’ who guides and helps to move the conversation forward towards a higher-level thinking. A constructivist teacher creates a context for learning in which students can actively engage in interesting activities that encourages and facilitates learning. The teacher does not simply

They need to internalise and develop science concepts successively. This normally happens when students are capable of investigating and searching for solutions on these scientific notions. Scientific inquiry approach allows students to explore, observe, analyse, and question current studies, to which will leads them to develop a deeper understanding of certain concepts. Smith et. al., (2007) state that inquiry requires “the identification of assumptions, use of critical and logical thinking and consideration of alternative explanations.” Thus, all students, regardless of their abilities, need to be motivated and interested in order to develop better attitudes to succeed in the content area of science. Such engagement can be developed with a proper inquiry based instruction (Singh et. al., 2010). Lee (2005) argues that not only inquiry-based instruction supports language acquisition, but also the knowledge in scientific concept being

It is alarming, however, to see many individuals do not advance to the formal operational stage of thinking, whereas, many teachers operate at either the formal operational stage of the post – formal operational stage (Fast & Jans, 2012). Such teachers assume that all students are operating at the same thinking level, which inevitably caused a miscommunication in the classroom. It is therefore important for teachers “to incorporate activities that should encourage students to inquire, explore, and compare their findings to what they already know”