CRITICAL INQUIRY APPROACH & PROBLEM-SOLVING APPROACH (AS GIVEN BY MAIER)

 

CRITICAL INQUIRY APPROACH:

           The society that is moving towards prosperity, teaches many things to its citizens. In such a society school has become a powerful media in reaching the pre-school goals.  In the school whatever learner, learns should be in accordance with needs and demands of the society. Therefore, it is not enough if the students are taught science simply. Science has to be taught in such a way that, every student must be able to make use of it for their live. A student who learns science will learn scientific attitude. But we have to train up him to learn the organization, correlation of class room knowledge with the external world. Life of an individual will be fruitful when the learnt knowledge is applied to solve the day to day problem. In doing so critical inquiry approach helps a much because every scientific concept that is learnt through observation proper inquiry into not of the cause with suitable investigation and using into life situation.

Steps in Critical Inquiry Approach

1.       Observation: The teacher must provide self-studying situations to the students in the class-room. While providing such situations teacher should remember that only the observable situations are be given. The students are instructed to make precise observation of the provided situations.

2.       Classification: After the observation, students are to be involved in listing the factors responsible for the occurrence of the phenomenon in the situation provided. Further they are instructed to classify the information based on the common abilities into terms, facts, concepts etc.

3.       Inquiry: This step is considered as the heart of the approach. Inquiry, means going to the root level of the problem cause. The student with scientific attitude will start thinking critically about the phenomenon.  They are instigated to find answers to the questions of why and how of the phenomenon by the teacher. For provoking this, teacher is supposed to ask thought provoking and divergent thinking questions.

4.       Hypotheses: In this step, students are to be guided by the teacher to formulate tentative solutions to the problem, later which may serve as a solution. Hypothesis is an intellectual guess to a problem for the solution.

5.       Investigation: In this step, an investigation is taken up to test and verify all the formulated hypothesis. The testing of hypothesis is usually done either with experimentations or through illustrations finally, most likely hypothesis is to be selected and can be considered as solution to the problem.

6.       Generalization: The solution obtained in the investigation step has to be modified rephrased into a generalization so that to be accepted by others in the class room.

7.       Application: The generalization formed must be made use in the understanding such situations in their social life.

Advantages:

1.       Students develop the ability of reasoning and self-confidence.

2.       Learning becomes permanent.

3.       Student discovers new knowledge

4.       Students become critical in responding.

5.       The accept a new idea only after verification.

Disadvantages:

1.       This is not a suitable approach at the elementary level.

2.       Not suitable approach for backward or slow learners who are with poor thinking ability.

3.       It is time consuming approach.

4.       May not be possible to use for all the topics in physics.

5.       Text-book are not written by following this approach.

 

PROBLEM-SOLVING APPROACH (AS GIVEN BY MAIER)

Meaning:  

         According to Bossing, a student should have some of the abilities to take a problem logically such as ability to sense a problem, defining the problem, gathering information, making conclusions and verification.

     Problem solving approach is an approach of solving a problem scientifically. Most of the times this approach is considered as similar to scientific method. This is effective approach for teaching scientific concepts, principles, theories etc. This is more psychological and scientific approach because of the following purposes.

1.       It is a form of learning by using the technique of problem as beginning step.

2.       Acquisition of knowledge is of prime consideration.

3.       Learning, and transfer of learning is developed clearly.

4.       Development of ability to transfer skills, learnt through school programmes into the community problems.

         Steps of Problem-Solving approach

           Norman Maier (1930) from his research on human reasoning at Berlin University, described the steps involved in solving a pendulum problem. Based on this the following steps are defined by him.

1. Describing Terminal Performances: 

        Describing terminal performance of students will constitute the solution for the problem. In this step teacher should state problem clearly. So that the students could understand what is includes. The teacher should not tell how to solve the problem, but only what the solution must consists of. The students are asked to construct the solution on their own. The description of the student’s terminal performance satisfies the following learning conditions,

a)       The student’s attention is directed towards those aspects of the materials which will lead to a particular solution.

b)      After arriving at a solution, it will generate the self-reinforcement for successful moves.

2. Assessing Students Entering Behaviour:

        This step describes that the assessing students entering behavior and information they require to have a solution for the problem. Here the teacher should present lower order information to determine whether they are known to pupil or not. It means to say that the previous knowledge related to the day’s problem has to be elicited. After presenting lower order information, students are to be involved in weaving higher order concepts, principles etc.

3. Involve the Recall of all Relevant concepts and Principles:

      It is not enough that, if the students learn some principles as a part of their achievement, but they must retain them for the future use. Therefore, in this step out of many information listed in the previous step, relevant concepts, principles, etc. have to be recalled with their meaning. It is here where students establish the relationship between lower order and principles with higher order. In this way all the relevant concepts and principles are recalled under the guidance of teacher.

4. Provide the verbal direction:

      In this step, teacher should give verbal direction to the students for their thinking, manipulation and solution finding. Further a brief account of the procedure to be followed, may also be given. All possible amount of oral instructions must be given with a due consideration to individual differences.

5.  Verify Students learning:

        In this step teacher has to verify the learning of the students from the available measuring techniques. Teacher should also assess the performance of the students, to see whether they have understood or learnt the problem.

Merits:

1. Students learn themselves.
2. Student discovers new knowledge.
3. Student learn problem-solving skill.
4. They learn to verify the problem.
5. This approach provides an opportunity to satisfy the curiosity of children.
6. They learn to create new ideas.
7. This approach encourages the self-study habit.
8. This approach is based on the learning by doing principle.

        Demerits:

1.       This approach is not suitable at elementary grades.

2.       It is time consuming approach.

3.       It cannot be followed for teaching all the topics in physics.

4.       It expects too much from the learner.

5.       Text-books written by following this approach may not be available.