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The GIsML Project > Heuristic > Phases of Instruction > Investigating

Phases of Instruction

Investigating.

The investigation phase of GIsML instruction and must be planned (by the teacher and/or the students), paying specific attention to what information or data need to be collected to answer the targeted question(s) and how that will be achieved. This step may occur either in a first- or second-hand mode. If ready-made first-hand investigations are used, it is important that students understand how and why collecting data by those means will result in obtaining desired information, given the targeted goal of the inquiry. If students play a role in determining the procedures to use, they need time and guidance to do that effectively. Both of these situations fit the prompt in the heuristic to "prepare to investigate."

A second part of this phase is the investigation itself. Teachers and students will need to discuss how to organize the data in order to identify patterns. Following the collection of data, students seek to identify any patterns that exist. This aspect of the GIsML orientation assumes there are patterns in the physical world that even young children can identify. It is to be distinguished from the task of explanation, which describes why the world works in particular ways. Identifying patterns is a deductive analytic process. Working from specific data sets, students identify results that appear to be related and determine the nature of their relationship. From this step, students can be expected to make knowledge claims, as scientists do. That is, they can make claims about the physical world, using the patterns they identified to generate those claims. To illustrate, when inquiring about the interaction of light with mirrors, students will observe a regularity in the angle of rays of the light reflecting from a mirror compared to the incident rays. Further study of this regularity can lead them to make the claim that the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection.

At this point, students may be ready to report or it may be important to discuss possible explanations for the patterns that they determined. If they are ready to report, there is an important step in providing time and guidance for student to determine what they should present to their classmates. Issues such as how to state the claim and what data to include are not trivial, either to the development of scientific reasoning or working as part of a learning community. This preparation, noted in the heuristic as "prepare to report" may simply involve developing written representations, but may also necessitate a return to data collection and/or analysis in response to the discussion of the group.

Phases of Investigation: Engaging | Investigating | Reporting | Constructing & Evaluating

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