INQUIRY-BASED LEARNING IN SCIENCE EDUCATION: ASSESSING ITS IMPACT ON CRITICAL THINKING OF THE FEMALE STUDENTS

Abstract

The rising research in education recommends that the prior instructional methods are not sufficient for the emerging industrial needs and the challenges and opportunities students facing in 21st century. The purpose of the study is to compare the effectiveness of InquiryBased Learning (IBL) and teaching with traditional teaching lecture method on student’s critical thinking (CT) skills and academic achievement in science of grade 8. The research took place in one of the urban public school of Islamabad, Pakistan. The study is a quasiexperimental in nature conducted with a pre-test and post-test of control and experimental group. Students from two science classes were the participants of the study (N = 70). The experimental group received IBL instructions, while the control group received traditional instructions. Content-specific CT pretests and posttests of two chapters of science were used to measure students’ content-specific CT skills, posttest of Cornell Critical Thinking Test (CCTT) was used to measure students’ general CT skills and traditional assessments of two science chapters were used to measure students’ academic achievement in science during the 4-weeks intervention. The scores of control and experimental group students were compared to find the impact of each instructional method. Findings suggest that the IBL is an effective approach in promoting content-specific and general CT skills of the students and academic achievement of experimental group students was greater than the control group students. This study will significantly contribute to the existing research and will help future researchers to further explore the avenues of IBL and CT skills.