THE PACE AT WHICH STUDENTS MASTER SCIENTIFIC ABILITIES IN SCAFFOLDED LABORATORY ASSIGNMENTS OF AN INTRODUCTORY ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE COURSE

While a number of federal reports have stressed the need for improving science education, surveys suggest an apparent difficulty that students have when employing critical thinking skills in non-theoretical scenarios. These findings underscore the need for new curricula that immerse students in the process of science, and in response to this need, several strategies have been suggested, including inquiry-based activities. Despite the demonstrated success of this strategy, little is known about the pace at which students are able to master different critical thinking skills within the context of inquiry and about the degree of mastery by non-science students. For that reason, this study aimed to evaluate the effect of scaffolded laboratory assignments on non-science students' development of scientific abilities in an inquiry-based introductory environmental science course. The study was duplicated in an effort to assess the reliability of findings, showing that most students (>80%) were rapidly able to master data representation, identification of uncertainty, and inclusion of relevant claims and supporting evidence. However, at the end of each semester, less than half of them were able to master higher-order abilities, such as distinguishing a hypotheses from a prediction or identifying underlying assumptions, among others. A positive correlation was found between command of domain-specific concepts and mastery of scientific abilities, thus suggesting that a conceptual understanding of the underlying processes to be investigated in the inquiry-based activities may be needed to foster the mastery of higher-order abilities.