Demonstrations of lessons: Teaching authentic inquiry in science lessons

Teaching how to implement an authentic inquiry is one of the most enduring claims for better teaching method in science classrooms, and for teachers it remains as a practical matter of classroom lessons. The practical matter is that teachers might want students to get involved in their own inquiry on the one hand, and one the other hand teachers should encourage their students to find what the lesson promises in the circumstantial details of the course of inquiry. In order to pursue this question, this study begins by closely examining the nature of the demonstration of lessons. It shows that the demonstration is not a demonstration of inquiry in which students watch and await unexpected outcomes, but a demonstration of lessons in which its interactional production shapes what participants see, talk about, hear, and thus what they do next. A close description of the field shows what the teaching of an authentic inquiry in the mundane classroom practices would be like. An inbalance between HRD and humane-orientations, and a preservation of the emphasis of adult basic education.