The Teaching of Science as
Enquiry
A review of J. J. Schwab’s work
on the nature of science
What is this work?
• An Inglis (later Brandeis Foundation)
presentation, put into essay form in 1962 and
published by Cambridge University Press;
• In it, Schwab questions the practice of
teaching science over the last 100 years,
exacerbated by the then-concern over
science & technology instruction in the
immediate post-Sputnik climate.
A central concern:
• “What will fulfill this need can be stated in equally
simple terms. It is, ironically enough, that science be
taught as science. What is required is that in the very
near future a substantial segment of our publics [sic]
become cognizant of science as a product of fluid
enquiry.”
• “Enquiry” is used in place of “inquiry” to draw special
distinction to the process of doing and the process of
teaching science, as separate from a common
definition.
Background
• Plato saw a natural division of people in society:
– A subordinate, auxiliary, and managerial class, taught
a body of doctrine that was conveyed as sure truths.
Members of this class were to be indoctrinated,
ingrained, and habituated into loyalty and belief.
Systematic loyalty was the nature of education.
– A second, upper class, was to be educated that the
true doctrine was that truth was no mover than the best
available opinion and by its nature, incomplete. Policy
makers were taught systematic doubt and continual
inquiry.
Background
• T. Jefferson embraced this philosophy, seeing
education divided between:
– what the masses needed to make a living;
and
– what the natural aristoi needed for
reasoning faculties and habits of reflection.
This leads to a fundamental distinction in how
science is perceived and promulgated:
The rhetoric of conclusions: The temporary
constructions of scientific knowledge are
conveyed as empirical, literal, and irrevocable
truths.
Narrative of enquiry: The nature of science is
conveyed as exactly what science is, that
science is fluid and investigations are driven
by ambiguity, incomplete information,
negotiation, dialogue, discourse, and
consensus.
The Rhetoric of Conclusions
has certain advantages:
• Facts are presented, with no mention of
reasons or evidence for what is asserted,
simply because everyone of importance says
it is so;
• It is easy to encapsulate in textbooks;
• It is easy to delegate the tasks of organizing
instructional materials into an editorial task;
• It is easy to assess as a direct quantitative
fashion
But as a consequence:
• “Discoveries” are remote, third-person
capsules of information;
• The discoveries are shown as a great
synthesis that ends a cycle in inquiry;
• The status of such discoveries as
reinterpretations and introductions of new
structures is suppressed;
• The role of data is minimized in deference to
the articulation of the core principles.
Two Processes of Enquiry
• Each requires different competencies and are both
practiced by different sciences;
• Stable enquiry – constructs an edifice of principle,
such that work is designed to fill blank spots
without questioning the principles as a whole. The
principles define the problem and the method, but
are not problems of investigation in themselves;
• Fluid enquiry – proceeds to the invention of new
concepts and principles, and tests them for
adequacy and feasibility. The goal is not to fill in
the blanks but to create new principles that
redefine a subject and guide new stable inquiries.
Two Processes of Enquiry
• Stable inquiry rarely tolerates faults and failure,
attributing such as poor application of methods or
inadequate defining of questions with respect to
principles. Judgment is by executive fiat.
• Fluid enquiry works primarily through failure and
frustration, realizing that normal guides no longer
are adequate or useful. Judgment is by legislative
decision.
Enquiry allows for a range of
approaches:
1. Questions and methods are specified to
allow students to discover relationships not
already known by them;
2. Questions can be posed, but the methods
and solutions are left for the student to
define and justify;
3. Presentation of the raw phenomenon,
without specification of problem, method, or
solution.
Consequences?:
• Enquiry introduces doubt and a level of discomfort
to the investigation;
• Learners are not rewarded for passive and docile
learning, but by active learning in which lecture
and textbook are subject to challenge;
• Weight is not given to the answers, but on how to
frame the questions and define the methods of
investigation;
• Alternative answers are allowed through a
justification of method.
Why are such distinctions
important?
• Scientists – if all that we train is the techniques
without question, then all we will get will be
technicians;
• Political Leadership – “The lay leader who
conceived of science in the dogmatic mode would be
unable to cope with the existence of a variety of
opinions and advices from different representatives of
the same special science.”
• Informed Public – without an understanding of the
narrative of enquiry, students assume that scientific
knowledge is dogmatic, and is either immutable,
uninteresting, or both.