INSES ch. 1 & 2

I want to begin by saying thanks to the creators of this article because it finally mapped out what exactly inquiry is and how it is defined in the formal world of education. As an overview, I was able to apply the concepts of the 5 essential features of inquiry through the examples of the scientist observing dead trees amongst the Pacific coast as well as the 5th grade class observing the three trees. I enjoyed reading about their processes and being able to connect each essential feature to their steps involved.

A point from chapter 1 that I think is extremely important for all humans alike to keep in mind is that ALL humans, young or old, smart or dumb, are curious! I say screw the old saying of "Curiosity killed the cat," and think that it is an essential feature to work with when truly trying to learn or understand something. For years, humans have used the trial and error method that have taught people either not to do things because it ended up bad, or created some of the greatest scientific findings known today.

I also appreciated the clarification that inquiry is NOT the end all, be all of science education. It mentions that highly-structured and open-ended inquiries both have a place and that lessons must have an eye for both.
Chapter 2 also helped me realize that inquiry is not simply a learning goal for the students but a teaching method that a teacher must understand in order to create a classroom of fully engaged students.
I find the NSES standards to be somewhat bland in the fact that they are vague and run on but at the same time if they gave me a specific lesson plan for each grade/curriculum I would forsee myself being even more aggrivated. Even though the large number of explanations for each standard become tedious, I am glad that they offer a list for variety in order to mix up the amount of structure to the extent of student driven investigations.

The 5 myths at the end of Chapter 2 helped so that I did not leave this article having some fogged overlapping misconceptions about the concept. However, I still feel confused with how they are trying to promote inquiry so hard when the myths somewhat say well we promote it buut you need to have a variety of instruction, or it is also important for the teacher to instruct and so on. I understand but it is still hard for me to find a distinct line between inquiry-based instruction and noninquiry-based.

I guess this leads me into the Learning Cylce: Exploration->Invention->Discovery.