S IPSE 1100997 Chapter1

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Anggita novianti, 2015

STUDENTS’ QUESTIONSON INQUIRY-TYPE LABORATORY IN LEARNING HEAT TRANSFER CONCEPT _{Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia}_|_{repository.upi.edu | perpustakaan.upi.edu}

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A.Background

Questioning ability is an integral part of meaningful learning and scientific inquiry. The formulation of a good question is a creative act and at the heart of what doing science is all about (Chin & Osborne, 2010). Hofstein et al. (2005) believe that the development of students’ ability to ask questions should be seen as an important component of scientific literacy and should not be overlooked. When students become a citizen, they will often find themselves in situations in which they will need to ask critical questions and seek answers so that they will need to make a valid decision. Apparently, this is the era where everyone can easily have access to tons of information from tons of both trustable and non trustable sources with just a click of a mouse. Therefore, knowing what is right matters as much as knowing what is wrong, and the only that we can do to know the value of right or wrong is through questioning.

Question is a problem to be solved, a solution demand. Students learn something when there is a problem they discovered or given. Science is not only about the solution, but it is also about how to find the solution itself. Learning how to solve the problem matters as much as finding the solution. The essence of learning science is the ability to apply scientific knowledge in

students’ daily life. Discovering possibilities in life through questions is also a

part of applying scientific knowledge. One of the concerns of nowadays education system is the scientific literacy of the students. Students are considered to have a scientific literacy when they are able to apply their scientific knowledge in making decision and facing problems. A very common activity which can teach students how to find the solution is a laboratory activity.

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form of students’ expression, when students are raising question, it means they are exposing what is in their mind during the time of learning (Marbach-Ad & Sokolove, 2000). Therefore, students’ question can also be a diagnostic tool for

the teacher to discover students’ understanding.

Students do not only raise question simply because they do not know,

question also acts as something else apart from showing students’ puzzlement.

Students’ question plays many other important roles during a teaching-learning process. According to Chin & Osborne (2010) in the process of argumentation, questions generated by the students play important roles in the argumentative process. Inparticular, the questions:

1. Foreground any incomprehension or points of disagreement students had; and pushed them to articulate these either covertly to themselves or overtly to their peers.

2. Prompted students to make explicit their beliefs and claims, thus displaying their (mis)conceptions for peers to examine.

3. Spurred students to identify the key concepts relevant to the scientific phenomenon at hand.

4. Impelled students to make connections between their various ideas, and elicited self- or peer-explanations of the scientific phenomenon.

5. Challenged opposing view points, stimulating peers to critically evaluate their initial ideas and to consider alternative propositions.

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Learning is not only about answering. Education is expected to help students critically analyze the conditions around them. Researcher analyzes answer, but answer does not come alone before a question was raised. Recently, schools are educating students on how to answer compared to nurture students on the culture of asking (Hofstein, Naaman, & Iyad 2010). Students will later on be the master of answering but still a novice at questioning.

Questions are designed to probe, to find something that is not already there, to discover relationships and possibilities that are not given (Bowker, 2010). Therefore investigative questions which trigger the students to discover more and more likely to be answered by further investigations are considered as higher-order level of question according to Hofstein, et al (2005). However a research by Allmond & Makar (2010) reveals that writing investigative questions emerged as challenging for the students. Students learn from the depth of a question. The deeper the question is, the more knowledge students will be able to learn. Students should not only nurture the habit of asking question, but they also should be able to raise investigative question. For when students are given a state of condition, they can find the possibilities that are not given in the state. It would open their mind to solve their problem in many alternatives of solutions.

Laboratory activities have long had a distinctive and central role in the science curriculum, and science educators have suggested that many benefits accrue from engaging students in science laboratory activities (Hofstein & Lunetta, 2003). They also suggest that through a proper developed inquiry

laboratory the potential to enhance students’ meaningful learning, conceptual

understanding, and their understanding of the nature of science is more likely to happen. Hands-on learning activities alone is believed to be not sufficient for conceptual change and therefore students also needed an opportunity to process for meaning through class discussion of the reasons behind what they observed in their independent design activities according to Dalton et al. (1997).

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practical skills and problem solving abilities, scientific habits of mind, understanding of the nature of science (Hofstein & Lunetta, 2003). Simple inquiry tasks popularly known as “cookbook” may not only fail to help students learn to reason scientifically; they may also foster a nonscientific epistemology in which scientific reasoning is viewed as simple, certain, algorithmic, and focused at a surface level of observation (Chinn & Malhotra, 2002). It would also be a form of creative act to let students solve their problem with their own way, as an application of what they have learned during their life time.

A large number of learning outcomes, particularly inquiry abilities, are best learned through investigations, and those motivated by students' own questions can be invaluable learning opportunities. Students also learn the characteristics of questions that can be properly investigated if they have opportunities to pose and investigate questions (National Research Council, 2000).

It is important to know the quality and types of questions arisen by students. For it is one of the indicators whether the students are able to apply their scientific knowledge or not while working on a group with their peers. Through this research, the flow of information among students inside their discussion can also be seen. Whether all students equally contributed inside the discussion or only dominant persons with high self-esteem and knowledge are the ones in charge of the discussion and activity.

The chosen topic for this research was not randomly picked by the researcher. Heat transfer is one of the topics which have the closest relation

with students’ daily life. Students are familiar with heat, when they feel familiar with a certain topic it is expected that they raise more question in the activity.

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this research is to investigate students’ questions on inquiry-type laboratory in learning heat transfer.

B.Research Problem

Based upon the research background described previously, the research problem of this study is “How is students’ question on inquiry-type laboratory in learning heat transfer?”

C.Research Question

Based on the previously stated research problem, this research attempts to explore the following questions:

1. How is students’ question during the planning stage of inquiry-type laboratory?

2. How is students’ question during the experiment stage of inquiry-type laboratory?

3. How is students’ question during the discussion stage of inquiry-type laboratory?

D.Limitation of Problem

In order to avoid a widening problem in this research, then the research will be limited to as follow:

1. Students’ questions in this research is the relevant questions posed by the students which will be classified by its’ productivity (Jelly, 1985).

2. Inquiry-type laboratory features in this research is adapted from National Research Council (2000)

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E.Research Objective

The research objective is specified to as follow:

1. To identify students’ question during the planning stage of inquiry-type laboratory

2. To identify students’ question during the experiment stage of inquiry-type laboratory

3. To identify students’ question during the discussion stage of inquiry-type laboratory

F. Significance of Research

The result of this research is expected to give a good input to as follow: 1.For Teachers

This research is expected to become a reference in designing an inquiry-type

laboratory in order to develop students’ questions-asking ability. 2.For Students

Through inquiry-type laboratory, it is expected that the student develop more and better questions in order to understand science not only as a product, but also to understand science as a process

3.For Other Researchers

As input and introductory study to comprehend the effect of inquiry-type