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Teacher guidance to mediate student inquiry through interactive dynamic visualizations

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Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate how three teachers guided their students to learn science using interactive dynamic visualizations incorporated in an inquiry digital unit. The results show that the teachers’ guidance varied in frequency, occasion, and content type. Each teacher demonstrated a different instructional approach in terms of the two dimensions of facilitating versus informing, and responsive, norm-revealing inquiry guidance versus planned, meaning-defining inquiry guidance. The study illustrates the range of inquiry instruction supporting learning with interactive dynamic visualizations. Moreover, the teacher effect was significant on the students’ learning outcomes when instructional time and the students’ pre-test scores were controlled using a multiple regression model. Effective teaching strategies that augment students’ integrated understanding of science phenomena through interactive dynamic visualizations are discussed based on the association between teaching effects and learning outcomes.

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Acknowledgments

This material is based on work supported by the National Science Council, Taiwan under Grant No. NSC99-2628-S-017-001-MY2. The author thanks Professor Marcia Linn for her comments on an early version of the manuscript. The author also thank Wen-Jeng Huang and Fang-Chin Yeh, who helped with the data management, transcription, and analysis.

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  1. Graduate Institute of Science Education, National Kaohsiung Normal University (NKNU), No. 62, Shenjhong Road, Yanchao District, Kaohsiung, 824, Taiwan

    Hsin-Yi Chang

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Chang, HY. Teacher guidance to mediate student inquiry through interactive dynamic visualizations. Instr Sci 41, 895–920 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-012-9257-y

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