Levels of inquiry focused in the Examination Council of Zambia (ECZ) school certificate chemistry paper 3 (5070/3) examination

Abstract

In science education, the inquiry has two distinct sides: 1) teaching and learning science by inquiry, 2) Science as inquiry. Teaching and learning science by inquiry involves the means by which students acquire scientific knowledge. On the other hand, science as inquiry focuses on science as a method by which facts are obtained. This study focused on teaching and learning science by inquiry. Specifically, the purpose of this study was to determine inquiry levels in the Examination Council of Zambia chemistry 5070/3 practical examinations for the period ranging from 2008 to 2018. Both questions in chemistry 5070/3 practical paper for each year were analyzed for levels of inquiry using analysis framework and procedures. Analysis framework and procedures involve two processes; categorizing sentences as experiential and further analyzing the experiential sentences for inquiry potential by considering the four levels of inquiry (confirmation, structured, guided, and open inquiry). An inter-rater agreement coefficient for analysis of the chemistry 5070/3 practical examination was calculated using Cohen’s Kappa (Cohen, 1960). The percentage agreement between the two raters for the chemistry 5070/3 practical examination past papers analyses ranged from 75 to 100% with the corresponding Kappa values from 0.421 to 1.00. This means that there was a high degree of agreement between the two raters in categorizing the levels of inquiry. The results showed that the experiments in chemistry practical examinations were mostly at the structured level of inquiry. The period under review had no experiments focusing on higher levels of inquiry such as open inquiry. These results have implications on science teaching, learning, assessment, and teacher education.