Primary School Students’ Understanding of Posing Questions for Scientific Inquiry

Inquiry-based science education, intended to create an authentic science-learning environment in the classroom, is usually initiated by posing questions. This study examines primary school students’ understanding of posing questions for scientific inquiry. The participants were 99 fourth-grade students (aged 8–9 years old) and 98 sixth-grade students (aged 11–12 years old) in Japan. The participants completed a paper–pencil test that included two types of assignments. The first required the participants to differentiate researchable questions from others on biology topics. The second required them to generate questions based on an unstructured physics experiment. Twelve participants from each grade were interviewed to clarify their ideas of researchable and non-researchable questions and the nature of science. Their age and gender differences were scrutinised using nonparametric statistics. The participants were able to identify researchable questions when mixed with non-researchable questions. There was no statistical difference in the identification of researchable questions among the participants from both grades. It appeared that it was fairly easy for students to identify these questions, possibly due to their familiarity with researchable questions in science and other subjects in school. The participants’ questions in the second assignment were extracted based on their interrogatives. The majority of the questions were why-questions and closed, poorly researchable questions. It was found that the what- and how-questions were more suitable for scientific inquiry. A limited number of participants could pose researchable questions, and most of them were from the sixth-grade. This study suggests that students should be provided procedural and epistemic knowledge to ask questions for inquiry and accordingly, teachers need to model appropriate scientific discourse in terms of asking questions, including the use of interrogatives.