Abstract:

Laboratory work is an integral part of physics education. The value in frontal experiments (i.e. experiments with ready written instructions) is great but does not open new views of understanding and further exploration of our pupils environment. Furthermore, frontal experiments are not interesting for most of our students because they do not develop individual investigative skills. This may be the cause for the low interest in physics at the junior high level. By introducing the scientific method (inquiry) at an early stage, experiments will not be frontal, they will be investigative processes which develop their personal scientific world-view. In my didactic experiment I studied how the scientific method (inquiry) approach compared to the classical Finnish approach of teaching physics improved their level of knowledge.

I compared 2 junior high classes (consisting of students at the age of 13-14), where in the first group the physics classes were taught using the classical approach whereas the second class was they were taught with the scientific method (inquiry) approach. The experiment showed that the mean KI (knowledge increase %) in the first class was 34% and in the second 52% (with the correlation coefficient of 0.87). I concluded that this was due to that the teaching material which was based on the scientific method (inquiry) gave the pupils the opportunity to apply their knowledge in physics and thereby gained a holistic view in different areas of science.

Keywords:

Scientific Inquiry, Didactics of Physics, Science.