Action Research: Inquiry Based vs. Teacher Centered

This semester I had the opportunity to conduct an Action Research project in one of my classes. Over the past year, I have become very intrigued with Inquiry Based Instruction and how we as teachers can use IBI to increase student learning. So that is what I decided to analyze through my Action Research project: Does Inquiry Based Instruction result in increased student learning compared to Teacher Centered Instruction?

I decided to try and answer this question in my 4th block Intro to AFNR class. There are 19 students in grades 9 - 12. I chose two lessons that dealt with pH and modified them to make one lesson more inquiry based and the other lesson more teacher centered. In the inquiry based lesson, students were given a question and from that they had to develop their own hypothesis and experiment procedure to test their hypothesis. When students asked questions, I asked them another question to help them answer their own question. Then students analyzed their results and created a research poster. In the teacher centered lesson, I gave students the question and the hypothesis, as well as the experiment procedure. When students asked questions I gave them the answer.

Before each lesson I gave students a pre-quiz that consisted of multiple choice questions revolving around the learning goals of the lesson. Then, after each lesson I gave students the same quiz as a post-quiz to measure student growth.

On average, students increased their score by 45% after the IBI lesson. In comparison, students increased their score by 19% on average after the Teacher Centered lesson. This indicates that implementing inquiry strategies into lessons results in more student growth. Further research should be done with a larger sample size. In addition, one lesson should be modified to be both inquiry based and teacher centered instead of two different lessons.