No abstract

From 2011, the new educational standard in Latvia in the framework of the educational reform on the centralised examination (CE) in chemistry stipulates students to demonstrate the inquiry skills they have mastered. The purpose of this study is to find out the students’ inquiry skills by analysing the CE results in chemistry. This study addresses the following research questions: (a) To what extent are the centralised examination inquiry skills measured according to the standard outcomes? (b) What information on how students have mastered the inquiry skills in chemistry is available from the CE results for the period of 2011-2015? (c) Does measuring the inquiry skills using inquiry-based laboratory work and inquiry tasks demonstrate similar achievements? The results of the study show that the CE inquiry tasks allow examining only several inquiry skills, that students have difficulties in hypothesizing and planning the procedure. The results of the examination inquiry task (the 'hidden' part) and inquiry-based laboratory work (the part prepared by the school) differ considerably. These findings show a contradiction. On the one hand, when carrying out a inquiry-based laboratory work at school students demonstrate good inquiry skills. On the other hand, they lack the skills when solving an inquiry task during the centralised examination. This proves the insufficient skills of the teachers in organising real student scientific inquiry during lessons and failure in using the inquiry-based laboratory work record as an objective measuring tool in evaluating the student inquiry skills in the examination, which is our case.

In 2005 a new chemistry subject standard for basic education was developed in Latvia. It includes a new component, ‘scientific inquiry’. In order to develop students’ inquiry skills, their teachers need to master them first. The purpose of this study was to examine Latvian chemistry teachers' skills to effectively organize student scientific inquiry within their lessons. From 2009 to 2011, experts from the project ‘Natural Sciences and Mathematics’ observed and analyzed the performance of 18 chemistry teachers at basic schools in 31 lessons. 56 lesson observation and analysis work sheets were analized on the student scientific inquiry. Chemistry teachers with experience in modernized chemistry contents have better skills to plan the study process towards the results, to apply study methods correctly and organize collaboration among students, to provide efficient feedback, analyze their performance in the lesson and reflect on it. In order to develop teachers’ skills to organize student scientific inquiry, it is important to focus on teachers’ skills to organize their work during the lesson and to reflect on it. This can be done through organizing teachers’ learning groups for investigating their professional performance, conferences and experience exchange seminars with lesson observation and analyses. Key words: chemistry teachers’ skills, lesson observation, scientific inquiry.

The improvement of teaching quality in Science subjects is closely connected to the implementation of reforms initiated in education policy resolutions in the school practice. It is crucial for teachers to implement the paradigm shift from transmitting information to 21st century learning design. It means to change not only teaching strategies but also their views what teaching is. Lesson observations were the main source to answer the research questions: What do lesson observations reveal about the students’ learning in science lessons according to criteria selected? What information lesson observation gives about teachers’ skills to organize learning according to changes envisaged in education policy resolutions? Key words: case study, lesson observation, science teaching and learning.

A concept “Chemistry for life” developed in Germany characterises a number of the-ses generally recognised in modern didactics, from which the principle “from the simple to more difficult” and psychological laws of learning are highlighted. This concept is in par-ticular characterised by the thesis that chemistry studies should be based on student every-day notions. The foundation of chemistry studies is experimentation with everyday substanc-es. The concept “Chemistry for life” can be successfully used for acquiring chemistry in schools in Latvia by intensifying the use of experiments with everyday substances and devel-oping student inquiry skills. Key words: chemistry for life, chemistry learning process, everyday substances, experiments, inquiry skills.