DEVELOPING STUDENTS' TRANSFORMATIVE AND REGULATIVE INQUIRY SKILLS IN A COMPUTER-BASED SIMULATION

摘要

The application of the web-based learning environmentrn“Young Researcher” (http://bio.edu.ee/teadlane) inrndeveloping students' transformative and regulative inquiryrnskills was studied. 98 teams with 392 volunteer studentsrnfrom the 6th to 9th grades (aged 10-16) participated in anrnall-Estonian competition. During the competition, a pretestrnand post-test were filled in and five problem-solvingrntasks in the learning environment “Young Researcher”rnwere solved. According to the results of the tests, thernstudents' skills of formulating research questions andrnhypotheses, and planning investigations developedrnstatistically significantly. On the other hand, the analysisrndid not demonstrate any statistically significant progressrnin developing students' regulative skills. Several problemsrnwhich might affect students' abilities to regulate theirrnlearning process were detected. Our study mainly focusedrnon developing students' regulative planning skills.rnImmediately after completing each inquiry stage, thernstudents were asked to reflect it and explain how they hadrnplanned and carried out this stage. Spearman correlationrnrevealed that the highest level of the regulation occurredrnamong the students with a higher level of inquiry skills. Itrndemonstrates that successful learners are more capable ofrnregulating their transformative processes.