Understanding Scientific Inquiry: A Study of Seventh Grade Students

Abstract

Increasingly, there have been calls for science educators to teach science through scientific inquiry as research has shown that students who learn via scientific inquiry better understand how to practice science as well as science content (Eslinger, White, Frederiksen & Brobst, 2008; Peffer, Beckler, Schunn, Renken and Revak, 2015). However, science educators face barriers in teaching scientific inquiry such as curriculum that provides little if any scientific inquiry components and lack of resources. The purpose of this study explored if the Raptor Lab, a set of two scaffolded, inquiry based modules, had an impact on students’ achievement of scientific inquiry. Upon completion of the two Raptor Lab modules, students applied their scientific inquiry skills to a Stream Study lab, in which students written lab report grades from 2015, a year without the Raptor Lab, were compared to lab report grades from 2016, the year with the Raptor Lab. Students on average Agreed or Strongly Agreed they learned components of scientific inquiry after completing the two Raptor Lab Modules. However, there was not a statistical significance found between lab report grades from 2015 (the year with no change) to 2016 (the year with change.)