Scaffolding elementary students' authentic inquiry through a written science curriculum.

Abstract

This study investigated scaffolding elementary school students' formulation of explanations through an 8-week biodiversity curriculum. Authentic inquiry situations in the curriculum provided opportunities for students to conduct elements of scientists' practices in hands-on investigations driven by the students' interests. Three support features-modeled explanations, direct content prompts, and sentence starters-were designed to help students focus on salient features of the inquiry situations. These three support features were placed differently in two treatments. In the consistent support treatment, three support features were present throughout eleven authentic inquiry situations. In the fading support treatment, three support features were gradually withdrawn over the same inquiry situations. The manipulation of the fading dimension of the scaffolding concept was based on the idea that students can learn more effectively when they take more responsibility to complete the learning task as they gain knowledge and experience. Forty-eight students in two 5th/6th combined classes participated. This study was quasi-experimental with two treatment variations. Based on students' prior knowledge and explanation ability, block strategies were used to assign students into the two treatments. Data sources included a multiple-choice test and an open-ended test administered before and after the treatments. Students' written explanations in the eleven inquiry situations were collected. Eighteen students were interviewed after the treatments. Results demonstrate that both groups improved on the multiple-choice and open-ended tests. While these two tests were not sensitive to the treatment differences, students' explanations were a much better indicator of the treatment effects. The consistent support group included fewer valid warrants in explanations before the treatments but gradually outperformed the fading support group as certain support features were withdrawn in the fading support treatment. Furthermore, this trend was largely created by students with high knowledge and medium and high explanation abilities while students with low knowledge and low explanation ability did not appear to take advantage of the scaffolds provided in this study. These findings imply that (1) consistent support is critical for elementary students' development of scientific explanations in complicated real-world inquiry situations and (2) effective scaffolds should be designed to reflect students' prior knowledge and inquiry experience.