The Effects of Scientific Inquiry-Based Instruction in Lectures on Students’ Scientific Knowledge of Acid-base Chemistry

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop lecturing materials based on scientific inquiry-based in lecture and investigate the effects of the developed lecturing materials on students’ scientific knowledge of Acid-base Chemistry. The study involved 54 first year pre-service chemistry teacher from two classes of a basic chemistry course taught by different lecturers with equal teaching experience. One of the class was assigned to the control group (N=27) and was taught with traditional strategy, and the other class was assigned as experimental group (N=27) which received scientific inquiry-based materials in lectures. The Scientific Knowledge Test Instruments was used to collect data after the study as post-test. The results showed that the experimental group’s score of scientific knowledge on Acid-base Chemistry (M = 15.8, SD = 2.83) was higher than the control group (M = 12.1, SD = 2.84) with a d-effect size of 1.31 (much larger than typical). T-test analysis yielded t (df = 26) = 5.218, p = 0.000 (two-tailed). This indicates that the implementation of the new lecturing material developed in this study strongly improves students’ scientific knowledge of Acid-base Chemistry compare with traditional strategy.