We are currently doing a couple of experiments in chemisrty that are inquiry based. The students are asked to reach a conclusion about the relationship between different variables that affect a gas. The problem that I see is that the students are waiting to be told what to do and what to think. How do we get away from that? Will students ever be comfortable enough to make a mistake? Are the grades that the students earn the stmbling block to this whole process?
The students want to know if they are conducting the experiment "right". I thought that true science was not based on the repeating of ohter experiments but by designing your own to test a process or theory. Should the students be developing their own experiments? I know this does not always go good but science, and education, are not always about success stories.
Even Winston Churchill said "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." I am wondering where all of the student's enthusiam lies?
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I think, as we have talked before, that somewhere along the educational journey of their lives they lost their love for learning and it was replaced by the constant need to please the teacher. The teacher in their eyes was the holder of what is right and wrong and to do differently than the teacher resulted in a bad grad. That is why it is so important at this time to help them change this mode of thinking.
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