Strategies to Scaffold Students’ Inquiry Learning in Science

Abstract

Inquiry-based science education (IBSE) has made a massive entry in science education classes. Students work with their competence development through inquiry. Such an approach calls for new strategies from the teachers to help students learn through inquiry. This study takes a descriptive approach to teachers’ understanding and usage of such strategies. Through classroom observations, video analysis, and teacher interviews, three cases are identified to hold teacher practice against a theoretical framework on scaffolding strategies where focus is on the means and intentions of scaffolding. The findings show that teachers use different scaffolding strategies according to the students’ level of inquiry understanding, and that scaffolding takes place in short sequences, but the findings also show that the teachers themselves are not aware of such differentiated usage of strategies. This calls for a both better understanding of teachers’ usage of scaffolding strategies and for professional development in being aware of how to use such strategies for best practice with students.