Abstract
In this study, I typified all observations and experiments published in the elementary school science textbooks of Company Y certified by the Ministry of Education in 2020 from the tendency of the content of “inquiry skills” that Hasegawa and others (2013) developed, interpreted the inquiring characteristic of each cluster, and considered a tendency of the problem-solving abilities to bring up in each school year. The results allowed me to clarify that the observations and experiments described in the textbooks can be categorized into six types according to each tendency of “inquiry skills”. Moreover, it was possible to suggest the trends in observations and experiments in each grade and, further, to reveal various points to be noted in teaching methodology, which were interpreted based on the exploratory characteristics of the six clusters. A cluster: The group which measures and observes the state and the property, and the characteristic of the change of the phenomenon, and thinks inductively. B cluster: The group which hypothesizes, controls the independent variable, understands the change of the dependent variable qualitatively, and thinks inductively. C cluster: The group which hypothesizes, controls the independent variable, measures and understands the change of the dependent variable, and thinks inductively. D cluster: The group which checks and records the state, the property, and the structure of the phenomenon, distinguishes them qualitatively based on the point of view of their classification, and thinks inductively. E cluster: The group which hypothesizes, quantitively understands the state, the property, and the characteristic of the change of the phenomenon, and thinks inductively. F cluster: The group which hypothesizes, and observes the state, the property, and the structure of the simple phenomenon that have causal relationships, draws graphs of the quantitative data collected by measuring the characteristics of the change, and thinks inductively.
