Effect of inquiry-based teaching and school climate on science learning: evidence from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)

• In Event: Poster session 2

Proposal

The teaching of natural sciences poses significant challenges for education practitioners, schools, and policy makers who want to go beyond the content of science and effectively use scientific inquiry as a tool for helping children and youth become citizens with knowledge and skills that allow them to process and understand information, explain natural phenomena and develop responsible attitudes towards the environment.

Traditionally, the teaching of science has primarily been a process of transmission of information, in which students have a passive role(Garritz, 2006; Osborne, 2009), with a few possibilities of questioning and creative expressions. This approach results in students’ loss of interest in the area and in ineffective learning for most of the them, and therefore reducing their possibilities of developing scientific skills and abilities (Wilson, Jr, & Purdy, 2011).

Around the world, inquiry-based teaching (IBT) and school climate have become prominent topics in discussions of school success and intervention targets in order to help improve learning outcomes for students. IBT is now one of the most recommended ‘active methodologies’ to develop intellectual autonomy and higher order thinking skills, while a good school climate is considered a protective factor that helps buffer the impact of adverse socioeconomic conditions on teaching and learning (Mayasari, 2017; National Research Council, 2000).

In this study we used a Hierarchical Linear Modeling approach (HLM) (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002)to investigate the effect of both IBT and school climate on the academic performance of Colombian students in the Science domain of the 2015 version of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) (OECD, 2016). The questions addressed by the research were: how does inquiry-based teaching (IBT) influence students’ academic performance in science and the development of critical thinking skills? To what extent does the school climate act as a moderator between IBT, academic performance and the development of critical thinking skills?

The results of the study show that IBT has a negative effect on students’ performance in science and a very small effect on critical thinking skills. Results also show that school climate is a moderating factor between teaching practices and academic achievement , and that student-level characteristics such as the student’s grade at the time of participating in the PISA survey, sex, and their socioeconomic status continue to be the main predictors of students’ academic performance. These results reveal the need to do more empirical research on the effect that the so-called ‘active learning and teaching’ methods have on student learning.

By presenting the results of this study at CIES 2019, we want to contribute to the conversation of how large-scale transnational assessment programs such as PISA can be used to inform educational policy and practice, and to start a dialogue about the evidence base of educational interventions and pedagogical approaches. We also want to examine how large-scale transnational assessment programs provide researchers with a unique opportunity to address our local educational issues and questions from an international and comparative perspective, and explore together the critical challenges posed to the education of children and youth in a rapidly changing world.

Authors

• Ricardo Gómez, Universidad de Antioquia

• Ana María Suárez, Universidad de Antioquia

• Niyereth Vásquez, Universidad de Antioquia