Author:
Nana Djumhana
Affiliation:
Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Indonesia
Keyword(s):
Inquiry, Science Process Skills.
Abstract:
The process of teaching natural sciences in elementary schools is expected to emphasize the development of science process skills, conceptual understanding, conceptual application, and basing natural scientific activities on the current social and environmental issues in accordance with the students’ ages and cognitive development. A scientific work in the dimension of science is a combination of scientific processes and scientific attitudes. As required by the science curriculum, the teaching of natural sciences should put an emphasis on the science process skills. A scientific work requires an improvement in the teaching quality of natural sciences to improve students’ learning achievement, participation, science process skills, and scientific attitudes. The inquiry model is assumed to be able to reinforce the teaching quality of natural sciences in elementary schools. At the same time, the inquiry model is considered an alternative of development model in this study. This study is
a descriptive experiment using the matched subjects design, in which a pre-test and post-test were conducted on students attending lessons on natural sciences in elementary schools (Sevilla,1993). A study of its like aims at describing the condition of an existing phenomenon objectively (Demsey,1996; Notoatmodjo,1993). The results revealed that there was a decline in the poor category from 70% to 10%. It goes to say that the inquiry model could improve elementary school students’ science process skills including: observing, posing questions, clarifying, predicting, communicating, interpreting, formulating a hypothesis, planning an experiment, applying concepts, and concluding.
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