An Analysis on the Scientific Inquiry Ability of Middle School Students through a Scientific Experiment-based Inquiry Competition

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the scientific inquiry ability of middle school students. Sub jects were 32 students(16 teams) who participated in the Scientific Experiment-based Inquiry Competi tion. Their scientific inquiry abilities were evaluated on the basis of two problems: ¡°To measure respiration contents of human for a minute¡± and ¡°To analyze constituents of airs when were inhaled and exhaled¡±. The components of scientific inquiry ability were perceiving a problem and formulating a hypothesis, planning an experiment, performing an inquiry, interpreting data, and drawing a conclusion. They have higher abilities of perceiving a problem and formulating a hypothesis, planning an experi ment, but lower of interpreting data, and drawing a conclusion. The results suggested that it should be educational programs to activate the scientific inquiry abilities and thinking abilities to synthesize data and correlations among variables.