The Reality of “Inquiry Skills” in Science for Lower Secondary School Students: Through the Preparation of Survey Questions Based on TIPS II and T-BIPS

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to measure the cognitive aspects of students’ “Inquiry Skills” and to clarify the current situation regarding the level of such skills. To this end, we created survey questions modified and restructured from TIPS II and T-BIPS for Japanese lower secondary school students, administered the surveys, and analyzed them. The results revealed the following two main points: 1) Correlation analysis between each skill revealed that “hypothesis” and “control of variables” showed the highest correlation, followed by “experiment” and “hypothesis,” “data interpretation” and “experiment,” “experiment” and “control of variables,” and finally “data interpretation” and “hypothesis,” in that order, showing a moderate correlation. This indicated a strong correlation among the integrated inquiry skills overall. 2) Cluster analysis was used to categorize the students’ response tendencies, according to five groups with distinct characteristics. The first cluster was defined as “moderately deficient in ‘observation’ and ‘graphing,’” the second cluster as “highly deficient in all skills,” the third cluster as “minimally deficient in all skills,” the fourth cluster as “moderately deficient in ‘prediction,’” and the fifth cluster as “highly deficient in ‘prediction’”. In addition, we interpreted the current state of these “Inquiry Skills” for each group and examined how instruction should be tailored to the actual current state of each group for more effective learning outcomes.