Arab Educational Information Network

Many panels recommended improving science teaching by counting inquiry methods into classroom. These panels emphasize that inquiry expands student learning by giving students ownership. Though, many teachers still present labs that simply call for students to follow written guidelines. This lab method is the opposing of inquiry. To get a picture of science teaching, Riyadh middle school science teachers surveyed to: 1) determine teachers’ qualifications. 2) Evaluate the labs that they considered their -best via a rubric that measures inquiry activities. 3) Understand why teachers appreciated certain labs. The resulting showed: 1) Riyadh science teachers are qualified to teach science but could benefit from more training and extra planning. 2) There were no statistically significant related to the elements of scientific inquiry in the science subject of middle school science teachers. This can be attributed to years of experience, training programs, and their qualification. On the other hand, there were statistically significant differences can be attributed to number of training programs, type of training, and the relativity of the training programs to the scientific inquiry activities. In light of these results, a number of recommendations were made, such as: paying attention to the issue of developing the skills of scientific inquiry; letting the students do the experiments themselves; the need to provide training programs to develop scientific inquiry skills for teachers. (Published abstract)