Inquiry-based course experiences provide a scalable and equitable way to engage students in research. In this study, we describe how we introduced inquiry-based experiences to ten lower-division and upper-division courses across the biology curriculum at a regionally comprehensive public university serving the diverse population in a major…

Background: Scientific inquiry is a widely accepted methodology to promote science process skills. In inquiry activities, students develop their understanding by addressing questions, performing scientific research and interpreting results derived from their research. Developing these science skills to perform scientific inquiries is considered a…

Experimental courses for undergraduate students majoring in biochemistry or related subjects often do not provide students with systematic and research-based experiences. To help students develop abilities related to laboratory techniques, data analysis, and systematic thought in biology, we performed an exploratory program that employs…

Undergraduate biology education has changed over the past decade, incorporating an iterative and evidence-based approach. Many educational assessments have confirmed the effectiveness of integrating authentic research and open-ended inquiry into introductory biology courses, demonstrating a significant positive impact on students' learning and…

Developing and communicating evidence-based explanations are regarded as essential skills in 21st-century learning. These skills are central to the process of scientific argumentation. Hence, teachers must adhere to a student-centered pedagogy that cultivates students' understanding and argumentation skills. This study investigated the effects of…

This study aimed to develop, implement, and evaluate argumentation-based inquiry teaching practices to train qualified science teachers. In this context, first, practices in argument-based inquiry were developed to have highly qualified individuals with cognitive flexibility; the ability to look at happening from divergent perspectives and…

The current study investigated how a guidance method that segments a complex task into simpler subtasks affects adults' inquiry-based learning in a science simulation environment. In a multivariate inquiry task, participants were asked to investigate the effects of all variables in one round of inquiry. In another group, participants were guided…

Students in a beginning level undergraduate classical mechanics course engaged in collaborative inquiry through the "Windwalker Project". The aim of this project was for students to create a free-standing movable structure as a way of testing and applying their understanding of the conceptual and theoretical elements of the course. This…

Renal transport is a central mechanism underlying electrolyte homeostasis, acid base balance and other essential functions of the kidneys in human physiology. Thus, knowledge of the anatomy and physiology of the nephron is essential for the understanding of kidney function in health and disease. However, students find this content difficult to…

Student encountered challenges in performing guided inquiry learning (GIL) activities are a minority literature in science education, but may provide valuable inputs to developing science process skills vital to scientific literacy. This study determined the challenges and difficulties by science-oriented students in performing GIL activities in…

The current investigation tested the effectiveness of an online student research project designed to supplement traditional methods (e.g., lectures, discussions, and assigned readings) of teaching research methods in a large-enrollment Introduction to Psychology course. Over the course of the semester, students completed seven assignments, each…

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…

Inquiry learning is a widely recognized method for fostering inquiry competence in science education. Nevertheless, there is discussion about how to best support students while working on inquiry tasks (in this case: experiments on causal relationships). To identify the kind of support students need in order to design experiments in upper grades,…

New approaches for teaching and assessing scientific inquiry and practices are essential for guiding students to make the informed decisions required of an increasingly complex and global society. The Science Skills approach described here guides students to develop an understanding of the experimental skills required to perform a scientific…

This is the start of a road map for the effective introduction of inquiry-based learning in chemistry. Advantages of inquiry-based approaches to the development of scientific literacy are widely discussed in the literature. However, unless chemistry educators take account of teachers' reservations and identified disadvantages such approaches will…