PAUL BRUNO: Reform Math vs. Inquiry Science.

A few thoughts on the apparent similarities and differences: . . .

2. There is some extra pressure from administrators and districts to employ inquiry methods with students at the low end of the achievement distribution. When low-achieving students engage in inquiry activities it can appear to the untrained eye that they are “doing science” the way the highest-achieving students do.

3. Inquiry science, like reform math, lowers the absolute-performance bar for success. Since the emphasis is on “doing” science rather than “knowing” science, it quickly becomes unfair to grade kids on the basis of the rigor and plausibility of the science they’ve “done”. After all, the fewer facts you teach them, the more unreasonable it is to demand that they incorporate facts into their experimentation/discovery/etc.