The impact of research-oriented collaborative inquiry learning on pre-service teachers' scientific process skills and scientific attitudes

Abstract

In the past decade, scientific process skills and scientific attitudes are widely regarded as essential factors influencing students’ achievement and their future career choices. Unfortunately, previous literature found that students’ scientific skills and attitudes tend to be unsatisfactory. Thus, cultivating students’ skills and attitudes is seen as a fundamental goal in science education. This research sought to promote scientific process skills and scientific attitudes of pre-service chemistry teachers using REORCILEA (Research-Oriented Collaborative Inquiry Learning). In this quasi-experimental research, a one-group pretest and posttest design was utilized. A total of 50 pre-service teachers (6 males and 44 females) at a medium-sized public university in Indonesia were recruited for this study. In order to gather data, the Scientific Process Skills Observation Checklist (SPSOC) and the Scientific Attitude Survey (SAS) were administered before and after the intervention. The data obtained in this study were analyzed through a paired-samples t-test and Cohen’s d. The results showed a significant increase from pretest to posttest in scientific process skills and scientific attitude scores during treatment, each with a high effect size. It can be summarized that REORCILEA is effective in fostering scientific skills and positive attitudes of pre-service chemistry teachers to a satisfactory level. It is recommended for educators to apply REORCILEA to other college chemistry courses to improve their performance.