An international collaborative investigation of beginning seventh grade students' understandings of scientific inquiry: Establishing a baseline

Abstract

Although understandings of scientific inquiry (as opposed to conducting inquiry) are included in science education reform documents around the world, little is known about what students have learned about inquiry during their elementary school years. This is partially due to the lack of any assessment instrument to measure understandings about scientific inquiry. However, a valid and reliable assessment has recently been developed and published, Views About Scientific Inquiry (VASI; Lederman et al. [2014], Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 51, 65–83). The purpose of this large‐scale international project was to collect the first baseline data on what beginning middle school students have learned about scientific inquiry during their elementary school years. Eighteen countries/regions spanning six continents including 2,634 students participated in the study. The participating countries/regions were: Australia, Brazil, Chile, Egypt, England, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Mainland China, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, and the United States. In many countries, science is not formally taught until middle school, which is the rationale for choosing seventh grade students for this investigation. This baseline data will simultaneously provide information on what, if anything, students learn about inquiry in elementary school, as well as their beginning knowledge as they enter secondary school. It is important to note that collecting data from all of the approximately 200 countries globally was not humanly possible, and it was also not possible to collect data from every region of each country. The results overwhelmingly show that students around the world at the beginning of grade seven have very little understandings about scientific inquiry. Some countries do show reasonable understandings in certain aspects but the overall picture of understandings of scientific inquiry is not what is hoped for after completing 6 years of elementary education in any country.

Ortaokul Öğrencilerinin Bilimsel Sorgulama Görüşleri: Cinsiyet, Sınıf Düzeyi ve Okul Türü Değişkenlerinin İncelenmesi

“…In line with these definitions, science literacy is one of the most important concepts of 21 st century science education and its most integral components are "subject-matter knowledge", "nature of science views" and "scientific inquiry" (Lederman, 2009). Scientific inquiry (SI) basically refers to the combination of having science process skills, understandings about how scientists produce scientific knowledge, having subject matter knowledge, creativity and critical thinking in problem solutions (Lederman et al 2019). The importance of gradual development of scientific inquiry skills and understandings of students is emphasized in both international and national reform documents as one of the important objectives of science education (Benchmarks for Science Literacy, AAAS, 1993; A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas, National Research Council [NRC], 2011; Ministry of National Education, 2018).…”

VASI Questionnaire in the context of Brazilian Secondary Education: an Analysis of the Students' Understanding of Scientific Inquiry

“…practices that can contribute to promote literacy in the citizenship and the students became autonomous and independent thinkers that are able of answering relevant issues (ROBERTS, 2008) -involves different aspects and practices, and two of them are doing inquiry and knowing inquiry. Even though they are intrinsically related it is often assumed that students who do inquiry will necessarily develop understandings about inquiry (LEDERMAN et al, 2019).…”

“…However, Lederman et al (2019) explain that there is an intuitive misconception that knowing about SI is linked with the doing of SI specially because part of the researches emphasized the doing of inquiry, which oftentimes is assumed to imply an understanding of inquiry.…”

Contextualisation of factual knowledge in genetics: A pre- and post- survey of undergraduates’ understanding of the Nature of Science

“…These studies have found that neither teachers nor students typically hold informed views of NOS (e.g. Lederman, Lederman, Bartels & Jimenez, 2019;Michel & Neumann, 2017;Dogan & Abd-El-Khalick, 2008, Kang, Scharmann & Noh, 2005Khishfe & Abd-El-Khalick, 2002).…”