Abstract:

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of scientific inquiry-based instruction on the academic achievement of primary school fourth grade students in science course. In the study, "pretest-posttest control group quasi-experimental design" was used. The dependent variable of the research is the academic success of the students in the Science course. The independent variable is the teaching method applied. Since the research is an experimental study, the study group was taken as a basis, without choosing the population and sample. The study group consisted of 100 students studying in primary schools in Giresun province. Research activities prepared in accordance with the inquiry-based teaching method based on the stages of the Inquiry-Based Instruction Method for the students in the "Matter and Nature" unit in the 4th grade Science Teaching Program of the 2019-2020 academic year; To the students in the control group, activities in the textbooks in accordance with the Science Education Program and prepared according to the traditional method were applied. As a data collection tool, "Academic Achievement Test" was applied as a pre-test and a post-test. The data were analyzed in IBM SPSS v24 package program. Since the group data do not illustrate normal distribution, the pre-test and post-tests were analyzed with the Mann Whitney U test, and the relationship between the pre-test-post-test scores of the groups was analyzed and interpreted with the Wilcoxon Signed-Ranks Test. According to the findings, there was no significant difference between the academic achievement tests of the students in the experimental and control groups before the application. At the end of the application, a significant difference was found in favor of the experimental group students. Accordingly, it was concluded that scientific inquiry-based Teaching practices were effective in increasing the academic achievement of primary school fourth grade students in the Science course.

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