Do Different Levels of Inquiry Lead to Different Learning Outcomes? A comparison between guided and structured inquiry

Abstract

Although the effects of open inquiry vs. more didactic approaches have been studied extensively, the effects of different types of inquiry have not received as much attention. We examined the effects of guided vs. structured inquiry on secondary students' learning of science. Students from three schools in north-eastern Thailand participated (N = 239, Grades 7 and 10). Two classes in each school were randomly assigned to either the guided or the structured-inquiry condition. Students had a total of 14–15 hours of instructions in each condition. The dependent measures were science content knowledge, science process skills, scientific attitudes, and self-perceived stress. In comparison to the structured-inquiry condition, students in the guided-inquiry condition showed greater improvement in both science content knowledge and science process skills. For scientific attitudes and stress, students in one school benefited from guided inquiry much more than they did from structured inquiry. Findings were explained in terms of differences in the degree to which students engaged effortfully with the teaching material.

Keywords:

• Guided inquiry
• Structured inquiry
• Science achievement
• Science process skills
• Scientific attitudes
• Stress

Acknowledgements

This article is based on work conducted by the last three authors for their master degree in science education at Khon Kaen University. The studies were partially supported by Khon Kaen University under the Incubation Researcher Project and by the Higher Education Research Promotion and National Research University Project of Thailand, Office of the Higher Education Commission, through the Cluster of Research to Enhance the Quality of Basic Education. We thank all the students who participated in this study.