Middle School Students’ Mastery of Scientific Inquiry Literacy based on Gender and School Location

Abstract

21st century competencies have contained the purpose of science education. The purpose of science education is to promote scientific literacy among citizens using information and scientific issues in everyday life. Scientific inquiry is a part of science literacy. This study aimed to describe the mastery of middle school students’ scientific inquiry literacy and its influence based on gender and school location. The paper test used the instrument to measure scientific inquiry literacy which was based on ScInqLiT (scientific inquiry literacy test) as proposed by Wenning (2007). The study was conducted in four middle schools in Kediri district with 267 students. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics by gender (119 boys and 148 girls) and school location (urban and rural areas). The result showed that the girls’ mastery of scientific inquiry was higher than the boys’, and the urban school students had a higher mastery of scientific inquiry literacy than the rural school students did. Moreover, science learning must be improved with learning methods and teaching materials and also refer to gender as well as school location.