Teacher guidance to mediate student inquiry through interactive dynamic visualizations

The purpose of this study is to investigate how three teachers guided their students to learn science using interactive dynamic visualizations incorporated in an inquiry digital unit. The results show that the teachers' guidance varied in frequency, occasion, and content type. Each teacher demonstrated a different instructional approach in terms of the two dimensions of facilitating versus informing, and responsive, norm-revealing inquiry guidance versus planned, meaning-defining inquiry guidance. The study illustrates the range of inquiry instruction supporting learning with interactive dynamic visualizations. Moreover, the teacher effect was significant on the students' learning outcomes when instructional time and the students' pre-test scores were controlled using a multiple regression model. Effective teaching strategies that augment students' integrated understanding of science phenomena through interactive dynamic visualizations are discussed based on the association between teaching effects and learning outcomes.