Dusting Off the Messy Middle: Assessing Students’ Inquiry Skills Through Doing and Writing

Identifying patterns of students' performance on simulated inquiry tasks using PISA 2015 log‐file data

“…Peffer and Ramezani (2019) found that experts performed investigative actions, whereas novices focused more on information seeking. Next to the investigative phase, studies have also used student‐generated log files to assess the skills related to the inferential phase of inquiry, in which evidence is evaluated in order to make inferences, draw conclusions, and construct scientific explanations related to the phenomenon under investigation (Li, Gobert, & Dickler, 2017; Scalise & Clarke‐Midura, 2018). Li et al (2017) showed that success in one phase of inquiry does not automatically transfer to the other phase; for instance, a student could generate appropriate data, but may not be able to explain why these data count as evidence.…”

“…Next to the investigative phase, studies have also used student‐generated log files to assess the skills related to the inferential phase of inquiry, in which evidence is evaluated in order to make inferences, draw conclusions, and construct scientific explanations related to the phenomenon under investigation (Li, Gobert, & Dickler, 2017; Scalise & Clarke‐Midura, 2018). Li et al (2017) showed that success in one phase of inquiry does not automatically transfer to the other phase; for instance, a student could generate appropriate data, but may not be able to explain why these data count as evidence. Following this line of reasoning, Scalise and Clarke‐Midura (2018) further examined the inquiry process during the two phases in order to generate maps of student performance.…”

“…While previous studies have examined the frequency and pattern of actions that underlie the responses to inquiry tasks for explaining student performance (e.g., Greiff et al, 2018; Li et al, 2017; Scalise & Clarke‐Midura, 2018), few studies have combined these behavioral indicators with response times to identify distinct profiles of inquiry performance, especially during the investigative and inferential phases. Students who received similar scores on an inquiry task might not have necessarily interacted with the computer‐based environment in the same way even though they may have reached the same level of performance.…”

Research Methods for Education With Technology: Four Concerns, Examples, and Recommendations

“…The textbook education example for multilevel modeling is where students are nested within a class. Li et al (2017) used this design with 293 students nested within 18 classrooms. They compared student performance on inquiry and estimation skills using a linear regression.…”

“…The study by Li et al (2017, their Table 2) was mentioned earlier because multilevel modeling could have been used, but their use of dichtomization is also noteworthy. They recorded the number of inquiry skills and explanation skills each student used, and conducted some preliminary statistics.…”