Packaging Inquiry-Based Science Learning for Students: A Discursive Analysis of One High School Teacher’s Talk from Singapore

Abstract

Knowing how teachers manage or organize inquiry-based science through their instructional talk is fundamental to its successful implementation in schools. In this chapter, we closely examine one high school teacher’s discourse to investigate how the teaching and learning of science by inquiry was presented to students during a new chemistry curriculum. Using discourse analysis, our findings suggest that teacher talk had in fact downplayed the learning of important scientific processes and content knowledge. Students were also moved along a predictable pathway towards the successful completion of their scientific investigations. Unknown to the teacher, he draws upon two types of interpretative repertoires: inquiry science requires low-level content knowledge and inquiry science as a make-do scientific practice, to teach inquiry science in the classroom. As much as teachers everywhere typically wish to master instructional approaches based on inquiry science, our results signal the ubiquitous but unfortunate disjoint between aspiration and practice that can occur even among highly able teachers within a high-achieving system such as Singapore. Our study contributes to the literature on teacher instructional talk by stressing how it can subtly mediate the quality and quantity of epistemic accomplishments of their learners during science teaching.