Developing High School Students’ Self-Efficacy and Perceptions about Inquiry and Laboratory Skills through Argument-Driven Inquiry

Abstract

The present study investigated how students’ self-efficacy changed after participation in four lab investigations that were designed on the basis of a new laboratory instructional strategy, namely, argument-driven inquiry (ADI). The study was conducted with 64 10th grade students from two intact classes in a public high school in the northeast of Turkey. One class was randomly assigned as an experimental group, and the other as a comparison group, and data were collected to allow for a comparison of students’ self-efficacy across treatment conditions. Both experimental and control groups had the same chemistry courses and laboratories. However, the experimental group conducted laboratory activities that were designed using the ADI instructional model, and the control group performed traditional laboratory instruction. The Students Perceptions in Chemistry Evaluation (SPiCE) Instrument was used to measure students’ perceptions of their own inquiry skills (self-efficacy) and attitudes about various aspects of chemistry. Additionally, the Interest in Science Pursuits Instrument was used to evaluate whether students’ interest in pursuing science endeavors changed after their laboratory experience. The results indicate that the ADI instructional model improves students’ perceptions about self-efficacy, inquiry skills, and lab skills as compared to traditional laboratory instruction. However, the findings showed that there was no significant difference between the experimental and the control group concerning students’ attitudes toward chemistry. With regard to students’ interest in pursuing science endeavors, there was also no significant difference between the experimental and the control groups.

Metacognitive Argument-Driven Inquiryin Teaching Antimicrobial Resistance: Effects on Students Conceptual Understanding and Argumentation Skills

“…In the literature, the potential use of ADI was found to improve students' conceptual understanding (Celep, 2015;Celik & Kilic, 2014;Enderle, Grooms, & Sampson, 2013;Ping, Halim, & Osman, 2020;Myers, 2015) and argumentation skills (Cetin & Eymur, 2017;Fadillah & Deta, 2020;Kadayifci & Celik, 2016;Myers, 2015;Ping et al, 2020). In addition, some studies reported the effectiveness of ADI in developing students' academic achievement (Demircioglu & Ucar, 2015) and scientific process skills (Eymur, 2018;Kadayifci & Celik, 2016;Ping et al, 2020). Studies also explored its positive effects on students' perceptions of their own inquiry skills or self-efficacy (Eymur, 2018), attitudes towards science (Celik & Kilic, 2014;Walker, Sampson, Grooms, Anderson, & Zimmerman, 2012), and engagement in science (Myers, 2015).…”

“…In addition, some studies reported the effectiveness of ADI in developing students' academic achievement (Demircioglu & Ucar, 2015) and scientific process skills (Eymur, 2018;Kadayifci & Celik, 2016;Ping et al, 2020). Studies also explored its positive effects on students' perceptions of their own inquiry skills or self-efficacy (Eymur, 2018), attitudes towards science (Celik & Kilic, 2014;Walker, Sampson, Grooms, Anderson, & Zimmerman, 2012), and engagement in science (Myers, 2015). For instance, in the study of Sampson et al (2013), the impact of ADI on students' science proficiency over traditional laboratory instruction was investigated.…”

Developing Students’ Reflective Thinking Skills in a Metacognitive and Argument-Driven Learning Environment

“…Moreover, some researchers found out that ADI enhanced science process skills (Eymur, 2018;Kadayifci & Celik, 2016;Demircioglua & Ucarb, 2015), student engagement (Myers, 2015), self-efficacy (Eymur, 2018) academic achievement, (Demircioglua & Ucarb 2015), and attitudes (Walker, Sampson, Grooms, Anderson, & Zimmerman, 2012;Celik & Kilic, 2014). For instance, in a two-year period of study of Kadayifci and Celik (2016), the ADI instructional approach was used in a General Chemistry course among preservice teachers where its effects on their levels of reflective thinking, their science process skills, their argumentative ability, and their ability to identify flaws in an argument were investigated.…”

Secondary School Students’ Views About the Use of Argument-Driven Inquiry in the Science Courses

“…Moreover, the method of argument-driven inquiry encourages students to develop and use conceptual models, design and conduct research, develop explanations, share ideas and criticize, all of which allow students to develop the knowledge and skills they need to become science literate individuals (Sampson, Hutner, FitzPatrick, LaMee & Grooms, 2017). In this context, when the literature is examined, studies have been conducted with students from primary schools (Chen, Wang, Lu & Hong, 2019;Chen, Wang, Lu, Lin & Hong, 2016), secondary school (Aktas, 2017;Aktas & Dogan, 2018), high school (Amielia, Suciati & Maridi, 2018;Cetin, Eymur, Southerland, Walker & Whittington, 2018;Eymur & Cetin, 2017;Eymur, 2018;2019;Kim & Hannafin, 2016) and also prospective teachers (Altun & Özsevgeç, 2016;Cetin & Eymur, 2018;Erenler, 2017;Eymur & Cetin, 2017). It can be said that these studies are mostly conducted with high school students and prospective teachers.…”

“…For this reason, it can be considered that studies involving the applications of the argument-driven inquiry method at the level of secondary school students are needed. At the same time, when we examined the topics on which the method of learning based on argument was studied, the method in question was used to provide academic achievements/conceptual understandings of the students or teacher candidates (Aktas, 2017;Aktaş & Dogan, 2018;Cetin, Eymur, Southerland, Walker & Whittington, 2018), their participation in science learning (Chen, Wang, Lu & Hong, 2019), their level of argument and their desire to participate in the discussion (Aktas, 2017;Aktaş & Dogan;Amielia, Suciati & Maridi, 2018;Chen, Wang, Lu & Hong, 2019;Chen, Wang, Lu, Lin & Hong, 2016;Cetin, Eymur, Southerland, Walker & Whittington, 2018), cognitive and affective expectations (Cetin & Eymur, 2018), views on the nature of science (Eymur, 2019), their self-reliability (Eymur, 2018; Research examining the impact of Eymur & Cetin, 2017), scientific writing skills (Cetin & Eymur, 2018) and metacognitive awareness (Erenler, 2017) has been reached. As a result of these studies, quantitative findings have been obtained that this method positively improves the learning output of students or prospective teachers.…”