An inquiry into inquiry science teaching in Colombia [electronic resource]
Keywords: Education.

Science education in different parts of the world has focused on teaching facts and concepts transmitted by a teacher in a lecture-style approach. In contrast, some initiatives, such as inquiry-based science teaching, use scientific inquiry—what scientists do to generate new knowledge—as a basis for teaching science to students. That is, inquiry-science teaching focuses on getting students to do what scientists do and how they learn about natural phenomena. This is not to say inquiry-science teaching ignores facts and concepts; it goes beyond transmission. Inquiry-Based Science Education (IBSE) programs have been implemented throughout the world, with the objective of improving science education. Even though IBSE programs have received wide attention and substantial funding, the impact of this approach on students' learning is unclear. As a small step in clarifying the impact of IBSE on students' achievement, a quasi-experiment was conducted and reported in this dissertation. More specifically, the study examines achievement differences between inquiry science education and typical science education in five schools in Bogotá, Colombia for overall achievement, achievement by types of knowledge (declarative, procedural, mental model) and proximity of the assessment measure to the curriculum (proximal and distal), and achievement as measured by performance assessments. Inquiry-based science teaching takes many forms. Moreover, even though studies compare inquiry teaching with other approaches, descriptions of this type of inquiry teaching are vague and vary widely as to classroom implementation. Through a review of the literature focused on empirical studies that compare inquiry teaching with other approaches, I developed a framework used to define inquiry teaching and assess it using a variety of measurement methods. The framework focuses on three basic elements: 1) teachers, 2) students, and 3) curriculum materials, and how they tap into inquiry facets or domains (conceptual, epistemic, and social). This framework guided my comparative study of an IBSE program in Bogotá, Colombia with a more traditional approach teaching the same unit, Human Body Systems. Three types of assessments measured fifth grade students' science achievement: paper and pencil tests with (1) multiple-choice and (2) constructed-response questions and (3) performance assessments. The multiple-choice questions were constructed to test the different types of knowledge; test items were written proximal and distal to the curriculum taught. Of the two performance assessments, one was content rich with a direct link to the curriculum, while the other was content lean with an emphasis on science process skills. A total of 365 students from both IBSE and the Control group took the paper and pencil tests and a sub-group of 140 students from both groups took the performance assessments. Data were collected from 5 different schools in Bogotá, three that teach science through an IBSE program and two that use a traditional approach. Data were analyzed using a nested design (classrooms within schools within treatment condition) and allowed for a comparison of the IBSE and the Control group science achievement. The findings were mixed as to the impact of IBSE teaching on achievement. While there was no statistically significant treatment effect as measured by the paper and pencil test including the multiple-choice or constructed response questions, there was a significant treatment effect in the content rich performance assessment as well as in the content lean. Moreover, even though there was no significant treatment effect on the paper and pencil tests, IBSE students consistently outperformed the Control students on all the different measures of science achievement. This result can be explained by the nature of the nested design, large variation among schools (that served as a significant part of the experimental error term) and consequently low statistical power. The results, then, suggest that students who learn science through inquiry are able to go beyond concepts and apply them in conducting science investigations. Additional studies with more schools in order to better generalize than I could in this study as well as to increase statistical power should be done in Colombia and other countries that are reforming their curriculum through inquiry-based science teaching.