Tools of Inquiry: Separating Tool and Task to Promote True Learning

Abstract

Teachers must clearly distinguish for students the educational technologies (the tools or means) used to investigate a subject from the subject (the task) itself. Without this distinction, students develop critical and fundamental misconceptions about their subjects of study, usually confusing the tool for the task. Digital educational technologies promise increased power of investigation, but are likely to do little more than compound the confusion unless critically understood and distinguished from their subjects of investigation. This article begins by identifying common and fundamental student misconceptions about their subjects of study with illustrations from pre-service high school teachers, locating the fault in the lack of the tool/task distinction. These descriptions and explanations are used to examine and raise concerns about the application of current educational technologies, all the while exposing several epistemological fallacies about those technologies. Finally, recommendations are made to aid students and teachers in distinguishing tools from tasks—an epistemological discipline—so that tools or technologies will appropriately serve as means to a subject's investigation, not as ends.

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