Flexible, creative, constructive, and collaborative: the makings of an authentic science inquiry task

Figures & data

Table 1. Summary of lessons and activities for the Sustainable Housing inquiry task.

Lesson Number	Description of Lesson	Activities
Lesson 9 (75 min)	Introducing the inquiry task and planning.	Part 1: Teacher introduced the Sustainable Housing Inquiry task and reviewed the seven inquiry questions, elaborating on possible experimental designs. Students chose groups and began planning their investigation.
Lesson 10 (60 min)	Conducting the investigation.	Part 2: Students completed the planning process, gathered their materials, set up their dataloggers, set up and conducted their respective experiments, and completed data collection. Material resources included their individual project books, scientific apparatus (e.g. lamp, model/carton houses), their personal iPhone camera, and the datalogger. Teacher circulated among the groups to help when needed.
Lesson 11 (75 min)	Constructing the report.	Part 3: Students drafted their group report together. Teacher circulated among the groups to help when needed.

Figure 1. Data tables generated by Jessica (above) and McKinley (below).

Table

Epistemic Practices of Authentic Science	Indicators of each Practice
Flexible and creative planning and conduct of investigations	Undertake inquiry that have multiple possible results or solutions Undertake inquiries without formal hypotheses (e.g. using questions to lead inquiries) Generate own hypothesis, including provisional or tentative hypotheses Test and refine hypotheses Make predictions Adapt research design to meet changing conditions
Provisional knowledge construction	Use disciplinary-specific technologies to assist with data collection, analysis, and sharing Use disciplinary-specific tools to link the ‘real world’ with abstract ideas, through increasingly refined multimodal representations Develop, revise, and refine explanations Relate data with previous knowledge Base claims/conclusions on the data
Collaborative inquiry	Experience cooperation, collaboration, and/or competition Build on each other ideas through cumulative dialogue Engage in critical and constructive discussions of ideas through exploratory dialogue