Evaluation of the acquisition of scientific competence among Biology students of Compulsory Secondary Education (ESO) and a proposal to improve their skill in graphic representations

Abstract

The development of scientific competence in inquiry-based teaching-learning involving everyday problems constitutes a beneficial approach to science learning. In this work, the acquisition of different essential skills for the scientific literacy of 3rd year students of Compulsory Secondary Education (ESO, for its acronym in Spanish) is analysed. For this purpose, a questionnaire has been developed to assess students' self-perception and knowledge of different dimensions of scientific competence, such as identification of researchable problems, formulation of hypotheses, experimental design, construction and interpretation of graphs, and drawing of conclusions. The results show that the students, despite undertaken out activities related to these skills and abilities, present serious difficulties in carrying out basic tasks such as problem identification, hypotheses formulation, graph construction or drawing conclusions. Consequently, we describe an innovative proposal coherent with the theoretical foundation and its results, focused on improving some of these aspects.