Does Inquiry-Learning Support Long-Term Retention of Knowledge?

Sarah Schmid

Abstract


Abstract: Structured Inquiry-Based Science Education (IBSE) provides the theoretical base for our 9th grader lesson, labeled “The Hearing of Soundâ€. Participation in the 3 consecutive lessons enables participants to explore the phenomenon of hearing. Participants complete matching hands-on experiments, learn about the theoretical background of these experiments, describe observations and formulate explanations. The study followed a quasi-experimental design with 138 students. The participants’ content knowledge on the subject was monitored 4 times: 2 weeks prior to the lesson (T0), on the day of the lesson (T1), 6 weeks (T2) and 12 weeks after it (T3). Students gained a significant short-term and a long-term increase in knowledge scores after 6 weeks. Furthermore, students showed a constant level of content knowledge when tested after 12 weeks, indicating that students did not forget information within the last six weeks. Furthermore, our inquiry lesson was suitable for both genders, as well as students with both high and low pre-knowledge. In their pre-knowledge boys outperformed girls. However, there was no influence of gender on the knowledge score after the lesson (T1, T2, T3). Conclusions for everyday teaching in school, by using inquiry teaching more frequently are discussed.


Keywords


Inquiry-based science education (IBSE); secondary school; gender; long-term retention; student centered learning

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References


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