2007 Volume 48 Issue 2 Pages 63-70
For upper secondary school students to enhance their own awareness of purpose and to conduct observations and experiments with a prospect of success, it is essential that they go through the stage of hypothesis setting, the starting point for scientific research. However, few specific instruction methods for this starting point have been developed. To develop a teaching method for developing hypothesis setting ability, we considered it important to demonstrate the structure of factors affecting this ability. To this end, we studied the "capability of extracting from natural things and phenomena two variables regarding questions that students have found," and we statistically determined the causal relationship between the awareness of independent variables and four possibly relevant factors: the relation of students with living things, their relation with third parties, their interest in/concern with living things, and their familiarity with books. As a consequence, we found that the students' experience of relating to living things cannot be fully implemented for the awareness of independent variables unless they relate to third parties, take interest in living things, and become familiar with books. It became evident that the students' experience of relating to living things constitutes the basis for hypothesis setting as an approach to scientific research in the field of biology.
