Abstrakt
The current social demand for people to be employed in the labour market and to make effective decisions in their everyday lives creates a need for intensive skills development, including skills related to scientific thinking and reasoning. The acquisition of knowledge through scientific processes is an essential part of the development of society.
The process aspect of science is constituted by a few specific skills. Exploring students' scientific skills provides insight into the potential for further development of society and advancement in the fields of science, technology, and engineering.
In the context of education, there is a need to develop scientific skills through specific tasks. The aim of this contribution is to present the process of developing inquiry-based tasks targeting the development of specific scientific skills.
This process has been verified on the construction of two complex tasks for the lower secondary education. Tasks focused on formulating a research question, designing a solution procedure, recording, and processing data, drawing conclusions and interpreting data correctly, and answering the research question.
The pilot was implemented in the fall of 2023 in an eighth-grade biology course. The tasks were validated by an expert panel consisting of expert of science didactics and in-service science teachers.
Comprehensibility from the students' perspective was observed. The tasks proved to be functional and applicable.