California: Effects of Scaffolded Guided-Inquiry Instruction on Student Achievement in Science

Although the idea of inquiry-based science teaching reform has been widely supported, there has been a lack of scientifically-sound experiments that support the reform. In order to determine whether inquiry-based science teaching has any scientific basis, a series of experiments were conducted. The first experiment was a randomized study comparing student achievement between classes that were taught using scaffolded guided-inquiry methods with kit based materials against the traditional textbook method. The scaffolded guided-inquiry method with kit based materials was found to be more effective. The second experiment tested the effects of scaffolded guided inquiry with kit based materials against a curriculum that only consisted of kit based materials to see how large of an effect the scaffolded guided-inquiry had on the overall academic achievement shown in the first study.

The results show that the students under the scaffolded guided-inquiry with kit based materials performed at a much higher level than students under only a kit based curriculum. The third study investigated whether simply a kit based curriculum would produce better academic results than the traditional textbook method. The experiment supported kit based curriculua to produce higher levels of academic achievement than the traditional textbook method.

The final experiment tested whether teachers experienced with kit based instruction were able to produce a greater academic achievement rate than inexperienced teachers in teaching the scaffolded guided-inquiry method with kit based materials. The study showed that although there was a higher rate of academic achievement in the experienced teachers, the difference was very small. The results from the study can led the experimenters to state that the scaffolded guided-inquiry method with kit based materials may have a time-saving advantage because the teachers would not require as much training in order to achieve effective results. In conclusion the study showed that the effects of scaffolded guided-inquiry with kit based materials is very promising.

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