The current trend in science education is to promote inquiry-based learning and student-centered classrooms. These are classrooms where students are asking questions about topics they are interested in and designing investigations to develop new knowledge. This idea of the inquiry-based classroom teaches students to "think" like scientists by having them make observations about the world around them and develop questions that they can answer through research and laboratory investigations
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. After all, asking questions is how the majority of the scientific discoveries throughout history were made. Although this idea of scientific discovery and inquiry-based learning is a trend in education, current lab exercises in high school and even at the college level provide step-by-step directions with a desired and already known outcome
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. These lab exercises do not teach students to become scientists, they simply teach them to follow instructions. These laboratory experiments do not even truly teach the scientific process or scientific method because they are carried out with adesired result in mind and a "correct answer." True learning and understanding of science occurs when students are able to develop their own experiments without knowing the results so that they can learn something new. Recent studies show that inquiry-based classrooms also have increased student engagement and students have a greater understanding of content and material
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So what does an inquiry-based classroom have to do with asking questions in biology? According to Polacek and Keeling, "asking questions is a critical aspect of thinking about science"
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. Students are more likely to "think" and learn about science when they are asking questions about how discoveries were made that led to the facts that they are often asked to memorize and recall in class. Students should be asking questions about biology, then carrying out laboratory investigations, and finally reflecting on their data to stimulate their thinking about new questions and new experiments
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. This is true science in action, an inquiry-based classroom with "question-asking" at its core. In fact, the core of science classrooms should be a laboratory setting to fully engage students in their learning and understanding of science content and to promote scientific thinking. Biology, specifically, is the study of life and the natural phenomena of living things and the course content itself should be thought provoking enough to stimulate students' curiosity and question asking
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. But in a traditional classroom setting where a teacher lectures, students' curiosity can be stifled and they can fall into the pattern of simply memorizing material without having any interest as to why these natural phenomena occur or how the world works. In classrooms today, the skill of asking questions to discover knowledge must be specifically taught and developed in an inquiry classroom
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Not only does asking questions in science have an impact on inquiry-based learning in the laboratory setting, it can also have a significant impact on scientific literacy and understanding. Scientific literacy is the ability to read a scientific article or watch a newscast about a science topic and have an understanding of the material that is being discussed and be able to be skeptical and judge whether it is good science
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. The root of understanding science and scientific literacy is being able to ask a good question. Once a student asks a question, they are able to make some observations and begin the research process
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. By asking questions and making observations, students' curiosity about a topic is piqued and it is the beginning of scientific research and understanding.
