2025 Volume 73 Issue 1 Pages 28-41
The present study was a longitudinal examination of the three-year development of students' critical thinking attitudes and inquiry-based learning skills through research-based learning. The participants (N=311: 145 boys, 166 girls) were students at a high school in Japan that had been designated by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) as a Super Science High School (SSH) and Super Global High School (SGH). They completed questionnaires six times during their three years in high school. The results were as follows: (a) students' mean ratings on the three subscales of the Inquiry-based Learning Skills Scale (IBLS) and the Critical Thinking Attitude in Inquiry Scale (CT-I) improved during the period of the research; (b) examination of the determinants of students' development using a cross-lag model found that inquiry-based learning skills and critical thinking attitudes at the previous time affected those measures interactively at the next time; (c) the scores of students who referred to the open-ended performance tasks in formulating questions during inquiry activities improved between the 10th and 11th grades; (d) association and transfer across classes and situations during the inquiry activities increased when the students were in the 11th grade. These results suggest that the students learned the inquiry method in the first semester of their first year (the 10th grade) at this high school, and that their ability to use that method improved in their second year there through group research activities using the method.
