Abstract
The purpose of this research is to find the tendency about what kind of questioning terms are used in which stages of inquiry activities in a Japanese lower secondary school science textbook. This purpose was established in order to learn about the typical kinds of inquiry activities of lower secondary school science in Japan. Therefore, the “questions” written in the lower secondary school science textbook were extracted, a data set was built, cross tabulation of the types and stages of a question was performed, and the results were considered. From the results of the study, the following tendencies were found; (1) similar questions are set in the former and latter parts of inquiry, (2) after observation or experimentation, more concrete questions, which become possible according to the acquired facts and concepts, are set, (3) there are questions for clarifying structures and laws of nature and questions for explaining natural phenomena using the acquired scientific knowledge, and they are properly used by the stages of inquiry, (4) there are different manners for setting questions according to the differences among scientific areas.
