Inquiry skills teaching and its relationship with UAE secondary school students’ critical thinking: Systematic review of science teachers’ perspectives
Othman Abu Khurma 1 * , Farah El Zein 1
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1 Emirates College for Advanced Education, Abu Dhabi, UAE* Corresponding Author

Abstract

Undoubtedly, due to continuous changes in time, environment, and demand, teaching techniques in science education should be constantly explored, reflected upon, and improved. This paper explores the current evidence related to secondary science teachers’ perspectives about teaching inquiry skills in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). After a systematic Boolean search in online databases, a research synthesis was conducted on the perspectives of secondary science teachers regarding inquiry and critical thinking of students in the context of UAE. Eight quantitative and qualitative studies were analyzed, and results showed that science teachers’ perspectives on teaching inquiry skills varied across studies. Additionally, some factors should be addressed when teaching critical thinking including socio-psycho factors (e.g., attitudes towards learning science, teacher competence, professional development, student characteristics, teaching and learning practices, and classroom management). This study recommends that further attention should be paid to teaching theories and approaches such as active learning strategy, sociocultural theory, constructivism theory, and affective filter hypothesis. These results are important since they identify the need of reevaluation of inquiry-based teaching and learning of science (e.g., critical thinking skill as a key one) in UAE secondary schools.

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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Article Type: Review Article

EURASIA J Math Sci Tech Ed, 2024, Volume 20, Issue 2, Article No: em2397

https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/14155

Publication date: 01 Feb 2024

Online publication date: 26 Jan 2024

Article Views: 991

Article Downloads: 577

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