Running head: JOURNAL ARTICLE CRITIQUE

Journal Article Critique

Ashley Jordan
Ivy Tech Community College

JOURNAL ARTICLE CRITIQUE

Everyone has their own personal view and understanding of inquiry and I am no
exception. When I think of inquiry I think of questioning students in the classroom that way they
can learn and understand various concepts that are presented. Inquiry to me, is when a teacher
asks a question or goes through a process that will open his/her students eyes. I believe that
students should also understand inquiry in a certain way. For students, it is difficult to grasp what
inquiry initially is, but after some practice they come up with their own understanding. Students
should understand inquiry as a form of questions or a whole process that will enable them to
learn and understand a topic. They may think that inquiry is questioning, which it is, or that
inquiry can be done by doing a process similar to that of the scientific method. Both of these
understandings of inquiry are correct and I believe that is how students should understand
inquiry. Using inquiry in the classroom is challenging for newcomers to the process but is
completely achievable. I believe that students should have more control over what they learn and
how they understand a topic. A classroom should be student-centered where the students lead the
discussions and the teacher is a mentor for them. Inquiry can be used every day in the classroom
by students that really wish to learn. They can do this by questioning their peers, having group
discussions, or conducting experiments. I personally have my own preferences about inquiry, and
how students should understand it as well as use it in the classroom.
The journal article, Literacy learning and scientific inquiry: Children respond is a great
article that covers what inquiry is, how students should understand inquiry, and how students can
use inquiry in the classroom. According to the article, inquiry is based on a constructivist
approach in which children are thought of as school age scientists that conduct experiments,
solve various problems, and discovers the functions of the world. Inquiry actually has a scientific
aspect to it in which questioning occurs throughout an entire process. Inquiry is a process in

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which learners can develop their own understanding in a problem- solving environment that
promotes them to find solutions to their posed problem.
Some people have distinct ideas as to how students should understand inquiry and the
article suggest just that. The article sets a basis for inquiry which is that before and during the
inquiry process a teacher has to take in each students prior knowledge from various experiences.
After establishing a students prior knowledge, a teacher can then work with his/her students
toward the understanding of inquiry. A teacher has to present new experiences for his/her
students that way they can question, make their own predictions and discover. Students need to
understand that inquiry is a great way for students to question and learn concepts. The article
suggests that students need to understand that a part of inquiry is having discussions about their
questions with their peers. Literacy learning and scientific inquiry: Children respond talks about
several ways that students should try and understand inquiry.
The article that I chose has several ideas as to how students should use inquiry in a
classroom setting. For instance, art of the scientific inquiry process if recording observations this
can be sparked by giving students a blank sheet of paper and asking them to write down what
they see. Students may also be recommended to draw their own pictures or what they understood
during an experiment. Students have to take charge of their own learning and during inquiry they
should explore and research books for more information. A classroom should be studentcentered meaning that they should be able to pick their on topics to talk about and question their
own experiments. Students may use inquiry in the classroom when they make their own KWLQ
charts; this helps generate learning and understanding of a topic. The article also talks about how
students should conduct their own discussions either by haring their ideas in pair, a small group,
or as a whole class. Sometimes students should report their scientific inquiry process orally or
write it down but that should be the choice of the students and not the teacher. The scientific

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inquiry article offers many interpretations as to how students should use inquiry in the classroom
(Schmidt, Gillen, Zollo, & Stone, 2002).
My personal view of what inquiry is how students should use inquiry, and how inquiry
should be used in the classroom changed slightly after reading my chosen article and looking at
the NSTA statement. I now believe that inquiry is more about the fact that students should ask
questions but also support or evaluate their responses to those questions. I believe now that
students have to form their own way of collecting their data from an experiment. The outside
sources I have found have changed my view on how students should understand inquiry. I think
that students should now understand inquiry as acceptable every day and that questioning an idea
is perfectly natural. Before reviewing my outside sources, I believed that inquiry should only be
used in elementary grades but now I know that it can even be used in college. My own personal
view of inquiry changed just a bit after I reviewed my outside sources.
My article view of inquiry significantly compared to the NSTA statement on inquiry. My
article talked about students should be little scientists and try to question ideas but the natural
world; this was included in the NSTA statement. The chosen article also was comparable to the
NSTA statement when they both stated that students need to ask questions but also support their
answers with evidence. Both sources discuss how the scientific inquiry process can be used in
the classroom. The NSTA statement differs from my article in the sense that it recommends that
scientific inquiry be up to and in college. My article is more focused on using scientific inquiry
in the elementary school setting. Overall, my article and the NSTA statement have many
compares and differed in only one idea (NSTA Position Statement, 2013).
Resources
NSTA Position Statement. (2013). Retrieved 03 15, 2014, from National Science Teachers
Association: http://www.nsta.org/about/positions/inquiry.aspx

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Schmidt, P. R., Gillen, S., Zollo, T. C., & Stone, R. (2002, 03). Literacy learning and scientific
inquiry: Children respond. The Reading Teacher, 55(6), 534-548.