Teacher, Text, and Experience: A Case of Young Children's Scientific Inquiry

In this descriptive case study, we describe a 10-day program of study of motion down inclined planes during which a class of 21 second graders investigated scientific relations such as mass and speed, speed and momentum, and mass and momentum via both text-based experiences ("second-hand investigations") and hands-on, materials-based experiments ("first-hand investigations"). We observed first-hand and second-hand investigations to work in concert to provide young students with rich opportunities to learn about motion and to express their developing understandings of scientific ideas. We highlight evidence of children in the class engaging in several processes integral to inquiry, namely, (a) using data as evidence, (b) evaluating investigative procedures, and (c) making sense of multiple forms of representations.

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