1. PLATON: Promoting Learning Approaches
for the Teaching of Natural Sciences
Inquiry Under the Microscope:
Training Activity for Inquiry Component 6:
Interpreting data and drawing conclusions
Promoting Innovative Learning Approaches for the Teaching of Natural Science
PT01-KA

2. Challenge
In 15 minutes try to find as many mistakes in students’ results and wrong arguments in students’ conclusions as you can. The team that finds the most wins a treat!!

3. How many errors did you find in students results
How many errors did you find in students results? What mistakes did you find?

4. Students’ conclusions:
How many wrong arguments did you find in students’ conclusions? What wrong arguments did you find?
Students’ conclusions:
Based on our results, the noisiest road is Road E.
Road B is the noisiest road during the afternoon when the shops are open.
Based on our results, the noisiest road during the afternoon when the shops are closed are Road A and Road E.
Not a lot of shops must exist in Road D since it has the least noise in both tables.

5. Interpreting data and drawing conclusions
INQUIRY COMPONENT 6
Interpreting data and drawing conclusions

6. IC6: Interpreting data and drawing conclusions
Traditional Practices
Students analyze and interpret the data in a whole class format.
When the outcome is not in line with the expected outcome, students are corrected or the “correct” and anticipated scientific knowledge is provided.
The data derived from students’ research are discussed without any form of analysis.
The data are analyzed by the teacher (because of time restrictions or assumed students’ difficulty to analyze data) and the conclusion is presented.

7. IC6: Interpreting data and drawing conclusions
Why is there a need to change? Students (and many adults) often accept what they are told without questioning or wondering if that makes sense. In addition, they often read or hear things from inaccurate sources without questioning, situation that leads them to misconceptions or irrational fears development which they often pass on to others as well. This is due to the fact that students do not have many opportunities at school to develop their critical thinking skills. The process of analyzing, interpreting data and drawing conclusions is a key element in developing students’ critical thinking skills and help them become informed and responsible adults. Thus, time consuming as it may be, it is important to provide our students with opportunities to work on data and observations, make conclusions, spot mistakes and revise some already formed ideas they may have.

8. IC6: Interpreting data and drawing conclusions
Inquiry Practices
Help students understand that any collection of data or observations are meaningless unless they are processed and interpreted.
Mainstream the idea that any result produced or piece of observation received needs to be assessed and reviewed before being accepted.
Help students develop a step-by-step strategy (methodology) for analyzing their data properly.
Highlight the existence of error factors.
Facilitate students in producing conclusions based on meaningful arguments with the use of proper scientific terms.
Support  the processing and interpreting of data (in order to draw a conclusion) for students with the use of strategies (e.g. spotting relationships between variables, finding frequencies, means etc.) and materials (e.g. graphs and tables templates, Excel sheets). When students get familiar with this process, your involvement will fade out.
15%
Lesson timeline

9. IC6: Interpreting data and drawing conclusions
Some more inquiry tips
Many times in experimentation, some data may have to be excluded due to different sources of error. Highlight the importance of errors in the experimental procedure and encourage your students to review their data before they start processing them and eliminate data that are incorrect or inaccurate.
Provide ample help for tools for data processing.
Guide your students on making conclusions focusing only on their data and backing them up with meaningful arguments.
Avoid arbitrary conclusions.
Avoid general statements.
Ambiguous data can lead to false conclusions.

10. IC6: Interpreting data and drawing conclusions
An Example X “You collected all these data during your experiment and as you can see from the values of your depended variable, the plant’s growth is affected by sunlight”. √ During the experimentation in the virtual lab, students gathered their data (plant’s oxygen release and height) in an excel sheet. Students are encouraged to try, with the use of Excel, multiple ways to represent their data (e.g. a pie or a bar graph, calculation of the mean of each measurement etc.) and to choose the one that helps them the most to draw a conclusion. You can choose this process because it is faster than doing a graph by hand for example and because it gives the opportunity to students to learn and try multiple ways of data interpretation and to argue for their choice.

11. Materials prepared by the Research in Science and Technology Group (ReSciTEG), University of Cyprus in the framework of the PLATON project co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.
Promoting Innovative Learning Approaches for the Teaching of Natural Science
PT01-KA