Students' inquiry skills in biology lessons at selected schools in Ceske Budejovice and surroundings

The aim of the bachelor thesis was to ascertain the level of pupils' inquiry skills during biology lessons at selected grammar schools and secondary schools in České Budějovice. The data was obtained using a didactic test focused on the individual steps characteristic for the inquiry based tasks. A partial objective was to perform questionnaire survey with biology teachers. The questionnaire was focused mainly on the teachers' experience with inquiry based education and also served for comparison of pupils' responses and their teachers' responses. The survey was carried out at four selected grammar schools and one secondary school in České Budějovice. There were involved students from all study programmes (four-year, upper cycle of six-year and eight-year grammar school) in the survey. In total 451 pupils participated in this study. The results showed that pupils achieved average results in a didactic test focused on inquiry skills. In this survey, pupils had the highest successful in their content knowledge in relation to the inquiry activity. The pupils also achieved relatively good results in terms of interpreting the data. However a below-average result was found in the pupils' ability to formulate their hypothesis and explain scientific phenomena. Pupils also had difficulties with evaluating and designing natural science research and with deducing conclusion. The cause of these results may be the lower rate of implementing the inquiry tasks in teaching, which was confirmed in the questionnaires obtained from the selected biology teachers, who stated that although these tasks take part in the teaching, they include them rather sporadically because these tasks are time-consuming and the preparation and realization of them are usually difficult