Abstract:

The progressive development of students’ analytical skills in science education in the areas of orientation and conceptualization plays a key role in science inquiry. It is essential not only to correctly identify problems but also to analyse them effectively and formulate theoretical concepts. This includes formulating research questions, experimenting, recording solutions, analysing results, and drawing conclusions. At a time when there is increasing pressure on students to be able to critically evaluate information and make decisions based on it, the development of these skills is crucial to raising their level of scientific literacy. The research conducted focused on how inquiry-based task solving contributes to the development of analytical skills in the initial problem-solving phase. To this purpose, six inquiry-based tasks focusing on biological topics were sequentially set to students. For each task, students were provided with feedback by the teacher based on expert solutions. Forty-five students from a Czech lower secondary school participated in the research. Students’ solutions were qualitatively analysed. It was found that by solving the tasks, students improved in analytical skills related to operationalizing the research problem in a research question. Increasing trends in the correctness of the solutions were found in the inclusion of variables from the research procedures presented and these variables were more specified. The most notable trend of improvement was found in the clear identification of variables in the problem solved, which led to students omitting fewer variables and not adding variables that were not included in the problem solved. The results suggest that solving inquiry-based tasks with providing feedback on the solution is a possible way to develop analytical science skills.

Keywords:

Scientific skills, science education, STEM, biology education.