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Although understandings of scientific inquiry (as opposed to conducting inquiry) is included in science education reform documents around the world, little is known about what students have learned about inquiry during their primary school years. This is partially due to the lack of any assessment instrument to measure understandings about scientific inquiry. However, a valid and reliable assessment has recently been developed and published, Views About Scientific Inquiry (VASI) (Lederman J. et. al., 2014). The purpose of this large scale (i.e., 19 countries spanning six continents and including 2,960 students) international project was to get the first baseline data on what grade students have learned. The participating countries were: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Egypt, England, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, United States, Taiwan, and Turkey. In many countries, science is not formally taught until middle school, which is the rationale for choosing seventh grade students for this investigation. This baseline data will simultaneously provide information on what, if anything, students learn about inquiry in primary school, as well as their beginning knowledge as they enter secondary school.

Developingscientific literacy for all students is the most often stated purpose ofcontemporary science education. Nature of science (NOS) is seen as an importantcomponent of scientific literacy. There are various perceptions of NOS in thescience education community and NOS itself is an ever-changing construct. Thismakes it challenging to develop instruments for measuring understanding of NOSat different levels. Many instruments have been developed and are beingdeveloped to assess NOS learning, which indicates the importance attributed tothis subject. In this study, we developed a multiple-choice test to measure NOSunderstanding of middle school students. The instrument was applied to 1397middle school students. The 24 item multiple-choice test had KR-20 reliabilitycoefficient of 0.74. A 12 item multiple-choice test created as a subset of the24 items of the original test. This test was easier and had higherdiscrimination, which can provide useful measurement data about students’understanding of NOS for diagnostic or formative purposes., Developing scientific literacy for all students is the most often stated purpose of contemporary science education. Nature of science (NOS) is seen as an important component of scientific literacy. There are various perceptions of NOS in the science education community and NOS itself is an ever-changing construct. This makes it challenging to develop instruments for measuring understanding of NOS at different levels. Many instruments have been developed and are being developed to assess NOS learning, which indicates the importance attributed to this subject. In this study, we developed a multiple-choice test to measure NOS understanding of middle school students. The instrument was applied to 1397 middle school students. The 24 item multiple-choice test had KR-20 reliability coefficient of 0.74. A 12 item multiple-choice test created as a subset of the 24 items of the original test. This test was easier and had higher discrimination, which can provide useful measurement data about students’ understanding of NOS for diagnostic or formative purposes.

Although understandings of scientific inquiry (as opposed to conducting inquiry) are included in science education reform documents around the world, little is known about what students have learned about inquiry during their elementary school years. This is partially due to the lack of any assessment instrument to measure understandings about scientific inquiry. However, a valid and reliable assessment has recently been developed and published, Views About Scientific Inquiry (VASI; Lederman et al. [2014], Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 51, 65–83). The purpose of this large-scale international project was to collect the first baseline data on what beginning middle school students have learned about scientific inquiry during their elementary school years. Eighteen countries/regions spanning six continents including 2,634 students participated in the study. The participating countries/regions were: Australia, Brazil, Chile, Egypt, England, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Mainland China, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, and the United States. In many countries, science is not formally taught until middle school, which is the rationale for choosing seventh grade students for this investigation. This baseline data will simultaneously provide information on what, if anything, students learn about inquiry in elementary school, as well as their beginning knowledge as they enter secondary school. It is important to note that collecting data from all of the approximately 200 countries globally was not humanly possible, and it was also not possible to collect data from every region of each country. The results overwhelmingly show that students around the world at the beginning of grade seven have very little understandings about scientific inquiry. Some countries do show reasonable understandings in certain aspects but the overall picture of understandings of scientific inquiry is not what is hoped for after completing 6 years of elementary education in any country.