Özet:

Inquiry-based learning [IBL] enhances students’ critical thinking abilities and help students to act as a scientist through using scientific method while learning. Specifically, inquiry as a teaching approach has been defined in many ways, the most important one is referred to nature of constructing knowledge while the individuals possess a question about natural worlds and explore the answers for the questions. The aim of this content analysis study was to analyze research related to inquiry based teaching through published research reports in the form of full papers and theses by Turkish researchers. For these purpose national and international journals and data bases were searched and totally 40 studies including 23 papers and 17 theses published in the last ten years were analyzed in terms of methodological approaches used and the subjects studied. Each paper and theses selected for analysis is subjected to a content analysis by using “Paper Classification Form [PCF]” developed by the researchers. The results indicated that studies focused on teaching are most frequent with 77.5%. Regarding the research methods, quantitative approaches were the most common with 72.5 % and 62.5% quasi-experimental research method used widely. Commonly used data collection tools were achievement, aptitude, attitude, perception and personality tests together with alternative assessment tests. Most widely studied samples were selected from the primary level in national papers while undergraduates were most commonly studied groups in the international studies. The findings of this study indicated that inquiry based teaching is a new research area in Turkey and mostly practiced in science and technology education at primary level. This study may help researchers in other areas realizing practicability of inquiry in teaching and apply it into their disciplines.

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