Forensic science is developed outside the classroom as a tool to investigate crime scenes. It contains subjects related to chemistry, physics, biology and technology. The approach in forensic science is an inquiry based approach. Forensic scientists have to work with different types of investigation and gather and record data from different sources found on the crime scene (and on the victim). In many cases there is not directly a 100% solution available. With the use of different techniques and different types of evidence, the researcher can state how likely it is that a certain crime was
committed by the suspect. The forensic researcher has to be open minded and be
aware not to use a tunnel vision.
All these aspects make forensic science very suitable to be used as an IBSE
approach in education.
Through the activities in this subunit 1, students develop basic abilities to do and
understand scientific inquiry. Abilities addressed in thus subunit are:
- Asking and answering questions.
- Planning and conducting simple investigations.
- Employing tools to gather data (fingerprints, properties of human beings).
- Using data to construct reasonable explanations.
- Communicating investigations and explanations.