"Initial thoughts" still wanted for posting at collaboration web site (http://serendipstudio.org/local/scisoc/lansdownefriends/) - email them to me (pgrobste@brynmawr.edu) Continuing on-line conversation at http://serendipstudio.org/forum/viewforum.php?forum_id=410

From 31 May

• Educational technology deferred to this morning
• Transactional education: reflecting on our own experiences
• Scope and sequence ...
  • Science as inquiry sequence: "sophistication" rather than sequential skill development
  • Intersects with/relies on language arts, math, motor, and social development ... contributes to ?
  • Can be thought of as age-related "filters" in interests/aspirations?
  • Need not correspond to "sophisticated" in adult/professional terms (prehistoric creatures vs "dinosaurs" as understood by paleontologists)
  • May involve movements from more egocentric to less egocentric, from more immediately experienced to more abstract (models)
  • May involve increasing attention durations, assuring "products" over appropriate times (want "product" for science, as for language/math)
  • Should involve always going from observations/questions to new observations/questions (contra typical "science fair" presentations, not denying significance of new interpretations but showing their significance in generating new questions; new understandings fine but want to go on to what they are good for; may want to develop an annual "inquiry fair"?)
  • Should involve making inquiry "conscious", ie not just be able to describe something/do something/predict something but be able to explain how/why something works the way it does; can include feelings of "mastery", being in control of something (at least to a greater degree than one once was)
  • Should involve increasing ability to make use of/challenge other peoples' observations/stories
  • Should involve increase in "base knowledge" (that needed for further inquiry? that needed to be good citizen? that needed to be successful individual?)
  • Should associate inquiry with pleasure, stay near direct experience (which may itself be an expandable arena), learn how things work (are made up of manipulable parts, can themselves be influenced by larger wholes they are parts of, involve cause/effect relationships (with some indeterminacy?, both linear and circular?). Develop ongoing excitement about "science" (as ongoing inquiry)

Moving on ...

• Issues of technology use in relation to hands on, inquiry based approaches and Quaker values
  • Issues: "first hand knowledge of the world", "Huck Finn moments", low band width and unnoticed control, "information overload"
  • The use of the web to expand first hand knowledge, allow for individual variation, increase individual control/participation/agency, achieve new kinds of community?

• Enhancing inquiry sophistication: preK-6 scope and sequence
  • To keep from currently doing
    • Exploring wide variety of things that are
      • loved by kids
      • age appropriate
      • available
      • usable in classrooms
      • fit into available time
      • generate new questions (some "models" don't)
      • take advantage of targets of opportunity (floods)
      • with some naming of "science", "scientists"
      • intersected with social studies, language arts, math (art?)
  • To keep from some ideas to build with?
    • think about content in relation to inquiry sophistication sequence?
      • PreK, K ... enjoyment of seeing new things (making observations, imagining)
      • some time in grades 1-2, discover use of models/abstractions to motivate new observations?
      • some time in grades 3-4, putting thoughts into words, using those to motivate new questions/observations?
      • to continue (awareness of effect of interpretations on observations?, ability to use that?)
    • Are PreK kids wanting to know "answers", inclined to black/white?
      • by innate sequence or by prior acculturation?
      • "two year olds speak better than four year olds" ... ("I went to store" vs "I goed to store")
  • What want kids to come out with at end of PreK-6?
    • Be comfortable with/skilled at living not in black and white but "in grey"

Inquiry skill	Questions explored	Background knowledge	Communication Ability/Awarenesses
curiosity (inclination to make new observations imagination (story telling ability) ability to distinguish observations from interpretations ability to use interpretations to generate new observations ability to recognize/use multiple interpretations from a given set of observations ability to recognize/use dependence of observations on interpretations ability to make productive use of other peoples' observations/intepretations	Who am I? What is outside of me? What is life? What is the relation of living and non-living things? What is culture? What/why is change?	scales in space and time biology psychology earth science astronomy chemistry physics mathematics/statistics logic/computer science	personal knowledge and conveying it use collective knowledge contribute to collective knowledge assess collective knowledge
Presume kids start with ability to make/learn from observations and to tell "stories", both about what will happen and about what produced what has happened (?) Initial task is to support/encourage those activities, expand their scope, begin developing sense that the products of active inquiry facilitate future inquiry. Create continuing opportunities to take things apart, put things together, see things in larger contexts in space and time. Include self in observations/stories/explanations. Make use of detective "mysteries" that can be "solved" in a variety of ways, lead on to further questions. Create contexts that encourage making distinctions between observations and interpretations/stories. Encourage discovery of the advantages of there being multiple possible interpretations of a given set of observations, and of the importance of being deliberate in drawing interpretations from observations. Create contexts that encourage discovery of advantages of making use of observations/interpretations by others. "communal" character of science/inquiry. Encourage development of ability to criticize observations/intepretations by others. Create contexts that encourage discovery of the dependence of observations on interpretations/stories, and the uses to which that can be put. Do all this in context of the "story" of who one is, who one comes to be (cf Teaching science as rich narrative)? With continual revisiting of same questions/some same contents at successive levels of sophistication? In any case, recognize that the importance of content is not to know but rather to lay foundation for further inquiry, content results from inquiry and is itself part of what generates still more sophisticated inquiry. And recognize that ethical/moral inquiry can/should be included.

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