How To

In the field of physics education, there are usually labs that accompany a number of the lessons. However, a large number of them have fallen victim to becoming "Cookbook Labs." Students end up following a very well defined set of instructions and aim to reach a predetermined goal. The hope moving forward is to break this mold and build curiosity again. Students will be able to create their own procedure and answer questions that they determine. This doesn't mean throwing away the labs entirely. Just changing them to fulfil a new criteria. 

Students should be the builders of their own knowledge and need to be encouraged to ask questions, as well as being afforded the time to gauge how this new knowledge fits in with what they may already know. Not only that, but the students should be offered some level of agency over their own education and what actually occurs in the classroom. It is our job as educators to provide a space that allows this for our students, so that they can flourish and grow not only in our classroom but in whatever class they end up in moving forward. 

There are a multitude of ways in which students and teachers can go about inquiry based learning. Some of these ways include peer-teaching and the reflection process described in other materials. One thing that does not often crop up in the discourse of this topic is the impact that it has on student confidence. Every aspect of our teaching will have an impact on our students mentally and emotionally and it is our job to aid in monitoring the way that our students react to this. We need to create a safe space for our students and so everything that we can to bolster them and their learning.