This paper proposes a study of high school science teaching which uses the Web as a resource for inquiry. The focus is on the interactions among teacher, students, and technology as students engage in inquiry-based activities, with an eye to understanding the possible role of the Web in the reform of science teaching.

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A high school science classroom, filled with 30 students and a teacher, is humming with computers connected to the Internet, ready for student exploration of the Web. Since publication of the NRC standards for science teaching, this teacher has been moving toward inquiry-based teaching, engaging students in designing and executing their own investigations. The Web, she believes, is a resource which can help make inquiry across a wide range of topics more feasible for students and teachers because of the breadth of content available, the wealth of scientific data, and the multiple representations of content it offers. And yet, the path to using the Web as part of inquiry in the classroom is not clear. In what ways are this teacher's expectations and hopes justified or realistic? How can she make the promise of the Web a reality in her classroom? The computers are on, the lesson plan is written, the teacher and students are in the classroom. What does the teacher do to enact the task, to manage the disparate information and resources students encounter, to deal with content she may not even know about, to create or maintain a climate in which students explore and inquire, to monitor and guide what students are learning? If it works for this teacher, if she is successful in using the Web to motivate students, to teach them science, and to help them learn the technology of the 21st century, is it feasible to expect other teachers to do the same?

As of September, 1998, the Web already had an enormous presence in K-12 schools throughout the United States: some 85% of schools and 41% of classrooms were reported to have connection to the Internet as the school year started (National Center for Education Statistics, 1998). Politicians, reformers, and educators hold out the hope that the Internet will have a profound positive impact on American education, and funding for hardware, software, and on-going connection to make the Internet a reality in schools has reflected the generally positive, optimistic view that the Internet will make a difference in K-12 education (Technology Counts, 1998; National Academy of Sciences, 1994; Owston, 1997; Schofield, Davidson, Stocks & Futoran, 1997.)

At the same time, research on reform indicates that large scale reform of education is extremely difficult and slow, and that schools change because of what happens in classrooms, in interactions among and between teachers and students, not necessarily because of changes outside of the classroom (Technology Counts, 1998; Cohen, 1988; Collins, 1001; fullan & Miles, 1992; Tyack & Tobin, 1994). Past technological innovations have provided small blips on the reform radar screen, but none of them &endash; from radio, to tv, to overhead projectors, to hand-held calculators &endash; have resulted in the reforms originally touted by their advocates (Cuban, 1986; Slavin, 1989).

Is the Web (or the Internet) any different? Advocates have pointed to three ways in which the Web can change education: by increasing the motivation of students to learn, by improving the quality of resources available in schools, and by changing how teachers teach (Baker, Gearhart & Herman, 1994; David, 1996; Dede, 1998; Means & Olson, 1997). Research indicates that neither changing the motivation of students, nor changing the resources available in schools is sufficient to reform education, that what matters is what teachers and students together do with the resources available. Each piece has a role: student motivation is important, good resources are helpful. But, in the end, what matters are the interactions in the classroom during which students and teachers make use of resources. Thus, it is necessary to understand how the Web might be incorporated into the practice of teaching, going beyond the features of the Web or the activities that it could support to investigate how the Web is experienced and used in the practice of teaching.

Domains of the study

The practice of teaching is a huge territory, much too large and uncharted to be manageable as a phenomena for investigation, so I propose to narrow the bounds of this study by looking at a segment of teaching which may reveal some of the possibilities as well as some of the barriers to successful, reformed teaching with the Web.

First, I will focus on teaching which attempts to use the Web live in classrooms. I contrast this with teaching which might use the Web as a resource from which the teacher obtains lesson plans, or prints out pages containing content for student use. And, I contrast it with teaching which gives students out of class assignments to use the Web (by going to the library or connecting from home.) Although all of these uses of the Web might have important consequences for education, none of them requires the level of connectivity, and expenditure for infrastructure, that has been advocated and undertaken, and none of them implies any particular changes in the interactions within the classroom.

Second, I will focus on uses of the Web as an information resource rather than a collaboration or communication resource. Advocates of Web use have publicized, or perhaps even glamorized, cyberactivities such as live participation in remote archaeological digs, and communication projects, such as pen pal exchanges with students in other countries or dialogues with experts. Although collaboration and communication projects on the Web can be quite engaging, the coordination of such projects with planned curriculum and the effort required to set up and maintain participation, may make such projects into special efforts rather than regular features of the curriculum for most teachers. Whether or not this hypothesis is correct, it is certainly the case that using the Web as an information resource is a different alternative, and one which many teachers may choose whether or not they also participate in collaborative or communication activities. Figure 1 illustrates the positioning of this study in the array of possible Web-based activities, and sources of reform.

Third, I will focus on science teaching for two reasons: the literature on reform in science teaching, and the science content available on the Web. Recent publications have laid out standards for reform of science teaching and learning, advocating inquiry as the preferred mode of science education . There is research about inquiry in science classrooms, at least from the perspective of student learning, which will be useful in framing a theory from which to study teaching with the Web (Blumenfeld, 1992; Roth & Bowen, 1995). Using the Web as an information resource for science inquiry is promising because of the wealth of both primary and secondary resources available on-line, from raw NASA data from space missions, to NSF supported Web sites specifically designed for K-12 education.

Figure 2: Domains of teaching

Finally, I will investigate high school science teaching, because so much of the content on the Web is relevant to the high school curriculum; because Web connection has tended to occur in high schools first; and because in many respects, high school teachers must cope with the most imposing barriers to reform, from fifty minute periods to pressure to cover the curriculum to demands for ever-increasing test scores. The territory of high school science teaching seems like an interesting and fruitful place to begin to understand teaching with the Web, and how it might enable reform   Figure 2 illustrates where this study fits in the general domain of research on teaching: my area of focus is at the intersection of research on science teaching, teaching with the Web, and reform teaching, further refined to focus on high school teaching, and on inquiry which uses the Web as an on-line information resource. Although there is extensive research on science teaching, each of the other qualifiers to the domain of this study represents an under-researched subset: in particular, there is very little research on teaching with the Web, on inquiry-based teaching in high school, or on the use of information resources in inquiry. What is needed to make sense of the teaching that goes on in this intersection is at least threefold: an analysis of the features, characteristics and affordances of the Web which might have a role in its use in science classrooms; an analysis of existing research on inquiry-based science teaching and on information seeking in classrooms; and a framework for studying teaching with the Web.

Questions of the study

As a first step in developing these pieces and beginning the study of teaching with the Web, this work will address the following questions:

1. What are the characteristics, features, and affordances of the Web which make it a promising site for teaching and learning science through inquiry?

This question includes creating a typology of Web uses in inquiry-based classroom, laying out the features and theoretical affordances of the Web for science teaching, and relating those features and affordances to what is known and hypothesized about inquiry-based science teaching. This will include a review of the literature on teaching with the Web, on inquiry-based science teaching, and on information seeking in classrooms to develop a framework for this study.

2. How do teachers make use of the Web in inquiry-based science teaching? In particular, what are the elements and tasks of teaching with the Web in a high school science classrooms, when the focus is on the Web as an information resource for student inquiry?

I will consider the tasks teachers actually engage in as they use the Web in their classrooms. This work will be accomplished through case studies of three high school teachers as they use the Web in their classrooms. Interviews of the teachers, observation of their classrooms, and analysis of student work will investigate the following questions:

• What kinds of activities or lessons does the teacher design to make use of the Internet? What are the purposes and goals of the activities? Do they include both content and process goals? Do the goals include aspects of technology literacy as well as subject matter, or are they primarily one or the other?
• As the tasks are enacted in the classroom, how do they change from the teacher’s conception or plan? As enacted, do the tasks reflect the planned goals? What role do students play in the enactment? What role does technology play in the enactment of tasks (e.g., do problems with technology cause changes in tasks)?
• How does the teacher handle diversity of information in the classroom &endash; multiple topics and sources; things with which she is unfamiliar?
• Does the teacher make special use of any of the Internet features hypothesized to be important in classrooms: current content, breadth of content, primary resources, multiple representations, student publishing, or single point access? How does the teacher use these features?
• How does the teacher deliver direct instruction to the students? Specifically, does the teacher give instructions to the whole class? To small groups? Individuals? Under what circumstances does each of these occur?
• What does the teacher do while students are working on-line? Does he walk around and look over shoulders, or stay in one place for students to come to him? If he is walking around, does he engage with students about what they are doing, or wait for them to ask questions?
• When the teacher engages with students while they are on-line, what is the substance of that engagement: discussion about technology, discussion about the content they are seeing on-line, discussion about the assignment itself?
• Does the teacher attend to information seeking skills - exploration of the information space, evaluation of sources, keeping track of sources &endash; and if so, how?
• Does the teacher provide starting points for on-line sessions? If so, how does he identify these links? (When does he find them, from what resources does he draw to find them, etc.) If not, where do the students begin?

3. What do the characteristics of the Web, and the realities revealed in the case studies of classroom teaching, reveal about the possibilities of, and barriers to, widespread use of the Web for inquiry-based science teaching?

This analysis will involve considering what is known about technology-based reform of schools, and more generally about the trajectory of reform, to hypothesize about what light the findings of this study shed on the future of the Web in schools.

Conjectures about the case studies

During the last four years, in the course of research for the University of Michigan’s Digital Library Project, I spent time in middle and high school classrooms helping teachers use the Web, observing activities in their classrooms, and collecting data for UMDL studies. With other UMDL researchers, I completed four studies using these data: a study of middle school students’ use of the Web in a science class (Wallace & Kuppermsn, 1997); a study of a middle school teacher teaching a science unit using the Web (Wallace, 1998); a study of high school students publishing stories on the Web in communication with experts (Kupperman & Wallace, 1998); and a study of high school students creation and use of a shared research database (Kupperman, Wallace, & Bos). My observations and interactions in these classrooms, and my own experiences teaching with computers, have helped me develop some preliminary conjectures about teaching with the Web.

First, and most generally, it seems apparent that teaching with the Web presents a huge opening for a new kind of teaching, certainly different from what might be called traditional teaching in which the teacher delivers information to the class and has students working on uniform assignments individually. It can also be different from typical laboratory assignments in high school science classes during which all students go through the same set of steps to complete lab work. The presence of the computer &endash;a third party to instruction &endash; creates a new set of relationships in the classroom between student and computer, between students who are working together at a computer, and within the teacher/ student/ computer triangle whenever the teacher interacts with students as they work. One thing that is new here is the unpredictable contribution of the computer to these interactions: neither the teacher nor the students have control of what the Web presents. Even in the most controlled of assignment &endash; and those that get closest to traditional modes of instruction &endash; surprises abound. Teachers will be confronted with content they aren’t familiar with, students will find themselves looking at sites they shouldn’t see, and issues of legitimacy and authority of information will become salient in ways previously unknown within the classroom walls. These differences will present themselves to teachers in ways that may be seen as barriers, or as opportunities, for new modes of teaching.

Second, in spite of the opening to teach in new ways, I expect that teachers will tend to mold their use of the Web to their routine ways of teaching. This can happen in several ways:

• Creating assignments and activities which are as close possible to prior work. For example, teachers may create worksheets which instruct students to go to particular sites and find specific information. Or they may restrict student exploration to a specific site for a limited period of time. These uses fit the Web into the classroom as if it were a text book, with end of chapter questions or short essay assignments based on specific reading.
• Focusing on technology skills as the learning goal rather than on science content. This allows the teacher to sidestep the contribution of the Web per se while accomplishing legitimate learning goals. This is probably a short-lived exercise, since learning to use the Web seems to be relatively quick and easy for most high school students, and more students are arriving in high school with substantial Web skills.
• Using the Web as a "research" resource in ways similar to sending students to the library to "do research." In the past, student research has typically been a hands-off activity for teachers: the teacher gives an assignment, the students go away and find what they need from whatever resources they can muster, and they come back with a product (a report or paper or presentation) for the teacher to grade. Using the Web this way, the teacher’s role can be merely a technical advisor, helping out with technology problems or giving students permission to change topics. Obviously, the teacher’s role can also go way beyond being a passive advisor, but that has not been typical in library research projects of the past (Kuhlkthau, 1993; Moore, 1995; Pitts, 1994).

Third, in spite of the ease with which most people can comfortably use the Web, teaching with the Web &endash; both in ways that are close to a teacher’s normal routine and in ways that are quite different from normal &endash; will be experienced as quite hard work. It is stressful because of all the uncontrollable variables: computers not working, the network "going down," students getting into unacceptable material, the teacher being confronted with science he isn’t familiar with, the varying levels of student expertise, and the abundant opportunities for students to goof off in a complex and often chaotic class full of computers and students. The experience of teaching with the Web may be like teaching 15 classes at once (or 20 or 30 depending on the number of computers). This has been a chronic problem with efforts to individualize instruction, to teach through discovery or inquiry, or to in any way intervene in the traditional scenario of teaching one lesson to a whole class. It is hard work, perhaps inhumanly hard for a teacher who has 150 students each day. Some advocates of the Web in schools believe that the Web will make this easier

Finally, for those teachers who work to take advantages of the opportunities to teach which the Web affords, I expect to see some of the following:

• The teacher interacting with students about the substance of the science content the Web has provided. This means not getting caught up in technical problems, and not overemphasizing completing a project or activity, getting to the finish. This interaction envisions using a Web site, or the content it provides, as a common artifact for constructing knowledge about science. The Web becomes instrumental in helping the student build knowledge, and provides the teacher with a means to assist in this learning process.
• Teachers themselves engaged in learning from the Web and from their students, asking genuine questions which students hear as questions rather than directives.
• Teachers facing the very real dilemmas of time constraints and pressures of curriculum coverage.
• Teachers developing new ways to create a dialog within the classroom so that students share knowledge and build on each other’s understandings.

Outline for the complete study

My plan is to include the following sections, briefly described below.

1. Inquiry and information seeking in science teaching: Review of literature. This section will include a short review of current literature on reform teaching in science, especially recent documents which provide a framework for reform and recent empirical research on inquiry in science teaching. The literature on information seeking in K-12 education will also be reviewed, placing the activities of information seeking in the framework of inquiry. The purpose of this review is to create a framework for understanding reformed science teaching and incorporating information seeking into a conception of inquiry.

2. The Web in the classroom: a theory of use. Features and affordances of the Web which could make it a valuable resource for inquiry-based teaching and learning will be analyzed. Drawing on the inquiry literature, I will offer a rationale for conjectures that various aspects of the Web make it a promising resource for reforming science teaching.

3. A model for studying teaching. A real issue in the study of teaching is to figure out what to look at and what to look for. What is teaching with the Web? This section will draw on research on teaching to describe the "instructional unit" and develop a model through which to look at teaching with the Web (Ball & Cohen, 1996; cohen & Ball, 1990; Cohen & Ball, 1998).

4. Case studies of teaching science with the Web. Methods for the case studies will be delineated, including teacher interviews, field observations, video recording, and analysis of classroom artifacts. Three case studies will be undertaken of teachers (not yet selected) who are experienced in using the Web in their teaching. Teachers will be observed during a unit of instruction which makes use of the Web, the unit to be selected and designated by the teacher. The field study may occur during week of intensive Web use, or a month with intermittent use &endash; that will depend on the teacher’s conception of the unit of study and how she fits the Web into her teaching.

5. Analysis of cases. In what ways do these cases illustrate inquiry-based teaching with the Web? What are the possibilities for such teaching illustrated by the cases, and what barriers are made evident through the cases? How do the teachers plan for, enact, and evaluate their work using the Web?

6. The Web and reform. Findings from research on reform will be brought to bear on the analysis of the Web and the case studies completed here to understand the possibilities and perils of using the Web as a resource for reform.

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