Assessing elementary school support for inquiry(支持初等教育).pdf

Assessing elementary school support for inquiry Penny Van Deur Received: 26 May 2008 / Accepted: 24 April 2009  Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 Abstract Increasingly in elementary schools, there has been a focus on the influence of school-level factors on students’ learning. The way in which the learning environment is organised in schools and classrooms is likely to influence students’ opportunities to carry out inquiry. Most studies have focused on the effects of the amount of schooling, rather than effects attributable to support for inquiry in the school context. This study clarifies aspects of school contexts that support inquiry at the school level and describes the development of an inventory to assess school contexts. The Primary School Characteristics Inventory has three components named Motivation for Student Inquiry, Organisational Structures to Support Inquiry and Structures to Support Inquiry Strategies in School. The instrument was effective for identifying schools with varying levels of support for inquiry, suggesting that some schools might need to modify the school context if students are to carry out inquiry in a self-directed way. Keywords Assessment  Inquiry  School context  Self-directed learning Introduction Increasingly in elementary schools (the term ‘primary’ schools is used in Australia), there has been a focus on the influence of school-level factors on students’ learning (Eccles 2005; Rutter and Maughan 2002). School qualities seem to have causal effects on pupil progress, with variations in schools appearing to affect students’ behaviour (Rutter and Maughan 2002). It is important that teachers know the crucial elements in learning environments that help and support students who are learning to manage and monitor their own processes of knowledge building and skill acquisition (Boekaerts et al. 2000). Further P. Van Deur Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia P. Van Deur () RSD 2051, Ridge Rd, Longwood, SA 5153, Austral