Conceptual development of pre-service teachers through verification versus guided-inquiry physical science laboratories

Verification laboratory instruction lacks opportunities for students to pose questions, generate hypotheses, and/or determine experimental procedures. Students in such settings often follow prescribed instructions towards a predetermined outcome. However, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) calls for more inquiry-based approaches through science and engineering practices. This pre/post comparison study investigates the impact of a new guided inquiry-based laboratory curriculum versus an existing verification-based laboratory curriculum on the physical science content knowledge of 98 preservice elementary educators. The results show no differences in disciplinary chemistry/physics items but show a significant difference in integrated items for the guided-inquiry laboratory. Such findings indicate the value of guided versus verification-inquiry for integrated explanations and have important implications for teacher education in light of NGSS.