Full-Structured or Supported by Incremental Scaffolds? Effects on Perceived Competence and Motivation

Scientific inquiry is an inquiry-based learning approach that emphasizes student investigation of research questions and the utilization of scientific methods to address those research questions. One such method is experimentation, which is viewed as an open-ended problem-solving process that is mostly perceived by students as a complex procedure. Supplementing open inquiry with instructional support that matches students’ competences is crucial to enable autonomous experimentation. Incremental scaffolds offer instructional guidance during experimentation and allow students to work on a task autonomously. To answer the question of whether guidance through incremental scaffolds, as opposed to full-structured experimenting, might have a positive impact on students’ perceived competence regarding experimentation and motivation, 251 students were assigned to two treatment conditions in our study. The “full-structured group” (n = 122) worked with full-structured experimentation guides and the “incremental scaffolds group” (n = 129) received incremental scaffolds as supporting materials during experimentation. Our results show that the students in the “full-structured group” perceived themselves as significantly more competent in planning, conducting, and analyzing the experiment and were more intrinsically motivated than the students of the “incremental scaffolds group”.