Past and present challenges to enquiry learning in tertiary science education
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Early last century, educators bemoaned the quality of science learning, stating that it should be a process of enquiry where students learn a way of thinking, and knowing, rather than a process of rote memorisation of science content and facts to be regurgitated in exams. Dewey, Schwab and Bruner stated that for meaningful learning to occur students must engage in experiences reflecting the way science is done. In the 21st century, this narrative has re-emerged in curriculum documents worldwide and there is now a broader acceptance that science learning should be in some way reflective of the “doing” and “discovery” in science as well as meet the needs of citizens living in a supercomplex world. To create such an enquiry curriculum at the tertiary level we need academics who can develop learning and teaching experiences which provide enquiry research experiences for students that demonstrate the contestable and rigorously uncertain nature of scientific knowledge. This study asked academics for their perceptions of the success of implementing an enquiry pedagogy and developing an intentional curriculum. We found that although academics perceive certain curriculum drivers, such as enquiry, to be important, they perceived their own effectiveness in delivering these qualities in their teaching to be poor. It may be that academics cannot change the curriculum because they are restrained by structures, but the literature on science identity highlights that academics also reproduce structures. If we are to create a more enquiry and investigatory experience for students learning science then we need to surface any “defensive cynicism” and hidden disciplinary processes. Learning how to do the learning in the discipline will move our students forward into science research careers and produce graduates and citizens who are scientifically literate.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.187 | 0.187 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.023 | 0.055 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.036 | 0.028 |
| Open science | 0.007 | 0.027 |
| Research integrity | 0.011 | 0.021 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.011 | 0.003 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".