Forms of inquiry-based science instruction and their relations with learning outcomes: evidence from high and low-performing education systems

ABSTRACT

Inquiry-based science instruction is widely advocated, but studies based on international large-scale assessments often show inquiry to be negatively associated with achievement. We re-examine this issue by examining whether the association between inquiry and learning depends upon the provision of teacher guidance. Participants were 151,721 students from 5089 schools from 10 highest and 10 lowest science performers in PISA 2015. Multi-group confirmatory factor analyses found that measurement invariance cannot be established, suggesting substantial regional variation in the pattern of inquiry-based instruction. Nonetheless, exploratory factor analyses indicated that at the conceptual level, many regions exhibit a pattern which contrasted between ‘Guided inquiry’ and ‘Independent inquiry’. Results of structural equation modelling showed that inquiry is positively associated with outcomes when it incorporates teacher guidance, and negatively when it doesn’t. However, the strength of the positive associations is stronger in regions where guided inquiry is measured with fewer items referring to student-centred activities. These findings are in line with current theories regarding the importance of scaffolding in learning from inquiry. This study suggests that it would be misguided to use PISA findings to support arguments to scale back inquiry and other constructivist approaches to teaching science.

KEYWORDS:

• Science achievement
• scientific literacy
• epistemic belief
• intrinsic motivation
• inquiry-based instruction
• large-scale assessment of learning
• measurement invariance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Anindito Aditomo http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3711-3773

Eckhard Klieme http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0728-4950

Notes

1 The research questions in this study deal with relationships of variables at a single (student) level, and thus preclude the need for multilevel modelling (Stapleton, McNeish, & Yang, 2016). The TYPE=COMPLEX approach was preferred because it handles the clustered/non-independent observations while requiring substantially less computational time compared to multilevel modelling (Muthen & Satorra, 1995).

2 As further evidence of the validity of the distinction between Guided and Independent Inquiry, we examined the correlations between both inquiry forms and three teaching variables: Transmissionist Instruction, Adaptive Instruction, and Emotional Support. Both forms of inquiry were positively correlated with the other teaching variables in the vast majority of the regions. More importantly, correlations were stronger with Guided Inquiry compared to Independent Inquiry in all regions. We argue that this is strong evidence supporting our interpretation of the conceptual distinction between the two forms of inquiry. On average, Guided Inquiry correlated with Transmissionist Instruction at 0.38 (range −0.02 to 0.59), with Adaptive Instruction at 0.46 (range 0.32 to 0.60), and with Emotion Support at 0.59 (range 0.47 to 0.73). Meanwhile, on average Independent Inquiry correlated with Transmissionist Instruction at 0.21 (range −0.16 to 0.49), with Adaptive Instruction at 0.27 (range 0.07 to 0.41), and with Emotional Support at 0.34 (range 0.17 to 0.50). See the Online Appendix for complete results.

3 We thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out by analysing the correlation between number of inquiry-specific items and Guided Inquiry effect size (across regions).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung.