Abstract

This study investigated the effects of providing domain information in an early stage of an inquiry process, together with an aligned hypothesis scratchpad, on inquiry learning, and hypothesis generation in particular. Participants were provided with basic domain information that was adapted to their prior knowledge (experimental condition) or received no introduction to the domain (control condition) before writing their hypotheses. Sixty-nine secondary school students from two countries were randomly assigned to the experimental or the control condition. These two conditions were compared on hypothesis generation, the subsequent inquiry processes of data recording and drawing conclusions, and knowledge acquisition. Results indicate that the supported students could specify more testable relations in their hypotheses, and could write hypotheses with higher levels of informativeness about variables, conditions, and relations. No differences between conditions were found on data recording, drawing conclusions, and knowledge acquisition. Limitations and directions for future research are presented.

摘要

本研究调查了在探究过程的早期阶段提供领域信息以及对齐的假设暂存器对探究学习和假设生成的影响。在撰写假设之前，向参与者提供了适应其先验知识（实验条件）或未收到该领域介绍（控制条件）的基本领域信息。来自两个国家的 69 名中学生被随机分配到实验或控制条件。这两个条件在假设生成、随后的数据记录和得出结论的查询过程以及知识获取方面进行了比较。结果表明，受支持的学生可以在他们的假设中指定更多可检验的关系，并且可以写出关于变量、条件和关系的信息量更高的假设。在数据记录、得出结论和知识获取方面没有发现条件之间的差异。提出了未来研究的局限性和方向。