Course Description

Research I for Grade 7 is a course in the Special Science Program designed to equipped learners
with essential scientific attitudes and Science process skills that will prepare them in conducting science
investigations. These skills include observing, measuring, inferring, classifying, predicting,
communicating, formulating research problems, formulating hypotheses, defining and identifying
variables, describing relationships between variables, designing an investigation, experimenting and
writing simple scientific report. The simple science investigations shall be confined within the school
premises. This course provides an excellent groundwork or prerequisite backgroundfor higher research
work.

What is Research?
Research is the systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish
facts and reach new conclusions.

 Investigation

 Experimentation

 Testing

 Exploration

 Analysis

 Fact-finding

 Examination

 Scrutiny

What is Scientific attitude?

 A scientific attitude can be defined as a way of viewing things, a curiosity to know how and why
things happen with an open mind and governed by facts.

Why is Scientific attitude important?

 Having a scientific attitude means accepting only facts that have been carefully verified,
together with a willingness to discard old theories that new facts tend to displace.

 Scientific attitude leads to truths and these truths are bases upon objectivity, coupled with a fair
degree or skepticism and humility as opposed to overconfidence and bias.

 Scientific attitude dictates that answers to questions be arrived at through a process of critical
thinking.

What are the different scientific attitudes?

 Curiosity

 Intellectual honesty
  Open-mindedness

 Skepticism

 Objectivity

 Perseverance

What is curiosity?

 Curiosity is a state of active interest or genuinely wanting to know more about something which
allows you to embrace unfamiliar circumstances, giving you a greater opportunity to experience
discovery.

 Curiosity is the urge you feel to know more about something.

 It is the state of being curios, inquisitive and wondering.

 It is a strong desire to know or learn more about something.

 It is the passion for exploration.

Why is curiosity important?

 Curiosity is important in excelling in any job or studies because you ask questions, learn from
others and look for ways to do better. The mind of a curios person is active.

 It makes you smarter.

What is intellectual honesty?

Intellectual honesty is an applied method of problem solving characterized by an unbiased, honest

attitude, which can be demonstrated in a number of different ways, including but not limited to :

1. One’s personal beliefs do not interfere with the pursuit of truth.

2. Relevant facts and information are not purposefully omitted even when such things may
contradict one’s hypothesis.

3. 3. Facts are presented in an unbiased manner and not twisted to give misleading impressions or
to support one view over another .

4. 4. References or earlier work are acknowledged where possible and plagiarism is avoided. Do
not claim scientific discoveries of others.

What is intellectual honesty?

 It is honesty in the acquisition, analysis, and transmission of ideas.

 A person is being intellectually honest when he or she, knowing the truth, states the truth.

What is open-mindedness

 Open-mindedness is the ability to accept new ideas and information.

  An open-minded person is adaptable and flexible.

 A scientist listens to and respects the ideas of others.

What is skepticism?

 Skepticism is generally a questioning attitude or doubt towards one or more items or putative
knowledge or belief or dogma. It is often directed at domains, such as the supernatural,
morality, theism or knowledge.

What is objectivity

 Objectivity is the quality of being objective

 It is the absence of bias, prejudice

 Objectivity is the principle drawn from positivism that as far as possible researchers should
remained distanced from what they study so findings depend on the nature of what was studied
rather than on the personality, beliefs and values of the researcher.

What is perseverance?

 Perseverance is keeping your effort continued in spite of difficulties until you accomplish the
task.

 Persistence is vital for success in every field of life.

 Persistence in study means to continue your study and never giving up due to difficulties in
study or other things which divert you from.studies

Importance of developing scientific curiosity

 1. Curiosity and drive to push bounds is what keeps us excited about our work and inquisitive
about the world around us. Often, in Science, the real answer is usually far from obvious.
Innovation and invention is often done when we look deep below the surface and ask ourselves
“why did this happened?’or “why isn’t this the result I expected

 2. Curiosity allows us opportunities that we wouldn’t have if we just accepted the results and
never asked “why?” When we look at the reasons behind a process and think about the ways in
which we could apply this elsewhere, we begin the process of discovery and invention. That’s
exactly how many of the major historical discoveries in science came about.

 One of the coolest examples of this is in the creation of penicillin. In 1928, Alexander

Fleming discovered penicillin and shortly after demonstrated its effects as an antibiotic. The
issue was, it needed to be mass-produced in order to be a viable pharmaceutical product.
Through the earnest curiosity of scientists, it was eventually discovered that the best strain of
penicillin for production was on a moldy cantaloupe in Peoria Marketin 1943.

 If it wasn’t for a worldwide search and many inquisitive scientists, that discovery may have
never been made. Because of this curiosity, countless lives have been saved by penicillin and the
antibiotics that have since followed.
  Even in your everyday life, curiosity is a powerful tool for everyday learning and opportunity.
Take the folks behind Park & Diamond, for example. They took something we come into contact
every day, bike helmets, and asked themselves: “can we make it foldable and therefore more
accessible?” That led them to create a foldable helmet, a truly innovative product that can save
lives– due in part to asking questions and seeking a better way.

 Our very own Alan Sentman said “Science as a field is entirely based on curiosity.  Science at its
basic core is a framework of processes to observe ‘everything’ with a goal of understanding how
it works.” We think that sums it up pretty well. Any experiment or measurement that does not
go as planned is not a failure; that experiment is an opportunity to learn why it turned out the
way it did.

 Here at Polymer Solutions, innovation comes when we are at our most curious. Without
curiosity, we might be tempted to just accept things on a surface level and never dig deeper. But
that doesn’t drive great science.

 Curiosity is the engine of intellectual achievement — it’s what drives us to keep learning, keep
trying, keep pushing forward. But how does one generate curiosity, in oneself or others? George
Loewenstein, a professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, proposed
an answer in the classic 1994 paper, “The Psychology of Curiosity.”

 Curiosity arises, Loewenstein wrote, “when attention becomes focused on a gap in one’s
knowledge. Such information gaps produce the feeling of deprivation labeled curiosity. The
curious individual is motivated to obtain the missing information to reduce or eliminate the
feeling of deprivation.” Loewenstein’s theory helps explain why curiosity is such a potent
motivator: it’s not only a mental state but also an emotion, a powerful feeling that impels us
forward until we find the information that will fill in the gap in our knowledge.

Three practical ways to stimulate curiosity

 Start with the question. Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham notes that teachers — along with
parents, managers, and leaders of all kinds — are often “so eager to get to the answer that we
do not devote sufficient time to developing the question,” Willingham writes in his book, Why
Don’t Students Like School?  Yet it’s the question that stimulates curiosity; being told an answer
quells curiosity before it can even get going. Instead of starting with the answer, begin by posing
for yourself and others a genuinely interesting question — one that opens an information gap.

 2. Prime the pump. In his 1994 paper, George Loewenstein noted that curiosity requires some
initial knowledge. We’re not curious about something we know absolutely nothing about. But as
soon as we know even a little bit, our curiosity is piqued and we want to learn more. In fact,
research shows that curiosity increases with knowledge: the more we know, the more we want
to know. To get this process started, Loewenstein suggests, “prime the pump” with some
intriguing but incomplete information.

 3. Bring in communication. Language teachers have long put a similar idea to use in exercises
that open an information gap and then require learners to communicate with each other in
order to fill it. For example, one student might be given a series of pictures illustrating the
beginning of the story, while the student’s partner is given a series of pictures showing how that
 same story ends. Only by speaking with each other (in the foreign language they are learning, of
course) can the students fill in each others’ information gaps.

 This technique can be adapted to all kinds of settings: for example, colleagues from different
departments could be asked to complete a task together, one that requires the identification of
information gaps that the coworkers, with their different areas of expertise, must fill in for each
other. Communication solves the problem — and leaves the participants curious to know more.