Scaffolding the teaching and learning of science

In learning science,the student seeks to understand the major elements of a body of pre established, consensually agreed knowledge. In doing science, the scientist seeks to create new knowledge. However science education can be a motivating and exciting inquiry into this body of knowledge. Hands-on and minds-on activities do play an important role into this process. A number of approaches and contexts, both in formal and informal education, have been developed. ICT provides tools for engaging with the exploration of the physical world and engaging in lab activities as well as in conceptualising the observations and data collected in the experiments. Providing appropriate scaffolding to the learner inquiry is crucial to create a balance between free exploration and guidance to avoid frustration. Using the experience developed in the UniSchooLabs project, we will present an ICT based approach to scaffolding the teaching/learning of science. We will argue that an inquiry model template might scaffold the teaching/learning process of science if it becomes the evolving roadmap of classroom activities, encompassing collaborative discourse and argumentation of the investigation at hand, shared by teacher and learners.