Assessing inquiry skills of upper secondary school students

Abstract

Inquiry-based science education (IBSE) has been in the focus of educational systems all over Europe in the last years. The main idea connected with IBSE is that students are involved in the process of learning by conducting activities to answer research questions similar way as it is done in science. This way they should gain not only scientific knowledge but also skills to do inquiry in order to understand how scientists work. In Slovakia this approach has been in force since 2008 when inquiry and the development of inquiry skills became the integral part of the science curriculum. With regard to the current science curriculum and increased interest in science and mathematics and informatics education a national project aimed at research on the efficiency of innovative teaching methods in mathematics, physics and informatics education has been running in the last few years in Slovakia. One of the project main research questions was to find out what is the current level of development of selected inquiry skills of upper secondary school students. In order to answer this research question a test assessing the level of selected inquiry skills was developed. The test was designed in cooperation with upper secondary school teachers. The test items are set in the context of physics as well as mathematics and informatics, however they test inquiry skills that should be content independent. The test was administered to 751 students aged 15-17 from the 1st and 2nd grade of upper secondary school. The test results have shown rather low level of students’ achievements with the mean score of 32.5%. It has also revealed differences between classes of different age groups, different streams and gender. Surprisingly, the 2nd grade students did not achieve better results than the 1st grade students. In accordance with our expectations, classes with focus on mathematics and informatics achieved better results than general or language classes and boys were better than girls. There were also different achievements in the test items aimed at different inquiry skills with the best results achieved in the field of designing an experiment and identifying variables and weakest results achieved in the field of argumentation. In the paper the results of the test across the sample are discussed and analysed in detail, with focus on selected inquiry skills and the context of physics.