Science Investigations with GIS SPECTRUM draft 7/3/2005 Page 1 of 13 Science Investigations with GIS: Helping Students Develop the

This article describes a school-university collaboration for innovative science teaching and learning. As collaborators, we worked together during the school year 2004-2005 to enact science inquiry projects in which 6 th graders learned to investigate the earth using a geographic information system (GIS). Our goals were not just for the students to learn the science concepts being studied, but also to develop the skills and habits of reflective inquiry. Our collaboration was supported by a National Science Foundation Research on Learning Environments grant (REC #0337598) to study ways to design curriculum t