My Research Proposal

RESEARCH PROPOSAL (An Overview)

Michael Anthony B. Mantala

Educ 293 - December 5, 2005

"If a single word had to be chosen to describe the goals of science educators during the 30-year period that began in the late 1950s, it would have to be INQUIRY." (DeBoer, 1991, p. 206).

This research proposal centers on the area of Inquiry-Based Approach to teaching science. This is an approach that seeks to engage the student in the investigative nature of science. Emphasis using this approach is placed more on the process of gathering information, converting data to scientific knowledge, and using scientific knowledge in the resolution of problems. In essence, what this approach does is to make the student an active participant in his or her education by learning science the way science is done. It takes on a new wind though, when confined within the framework of a Transformative Science Curriculum like that adopted at Berea Arts and Sciences High School. In this curriculum, students are trained to be equally adept in both the sciences and the arts. Therefore, the sciences have to be taught in a manner that integrates certain artistic activities like visual arts, music, and creative movements.

As both the Inquiry-Based Approach to teaching science and the Berea Model of Transformative Science Curriculum are recognizably multifaceted and differently situated, it is considered that inquiry in this regard, which is taken as an attempt to carry out the teaching of science in a manner with which it is practiced through the scientific method, may take on a different dimension when confined in the Transformative Science Curriculum. Thus considered, can the Inquiry-Based Approach to teaching science - which saw widespread implementation in the early ‘90s - be implemented and applied to the Berean experience and still touch on the constructivist models of learning, complemented to varying degrees by project-based teaching and problem-based instruction?

The key questions subsumed in this proposal are: (1) how can Inquiry-Based Approach to science teaching be implemented in the framework of a Transformative Curriculum in Science? (2) what are possible implications that may arise from its implementation? and (3) how can Inquiry-Based Approach to teaching science using the Transformative Curriculum translate more effectively to scientific knowledge?