Abstract: the purpose of the study was to compare the effectiveness of two teaching strategies that utilize two different cognitive tools on the development of students’ inquiry skills in mechanics. The strategies were used to help students formulate Newton’s 2nd law of motion. Two cognitive tools had been used: a computer simulation and manipulations of concrete objects in physics laboratory. A quasi-experimental method that employed the 2 Cognitive Tools ? 2 Time of learning split-plot factorial design was applied in the study. The sample consisted of 54 Grade 11 students from two physics classes of the university preparation section in a high school of the province of Ontario (Canada). One class was assigned to interactive computer simulations (treatment) and the other to concrete objects in physics laboratory (control). Both tools were embedded in the general framework of the guided-inquiry cycle approach. The results showed that the interaction effect of the Cognitive Tools ? Time of learning was not statistically significant. However, the results also showed a significant effect on the development of students’ inquiry skills regardless of the type of cognitive tool they had used. Although the findings suggested that these two strategies are effective in developing students’ inquiry skills in mechanics, students in the computer simulation group had shown larger gain in their inquiry skills test than their counterparts in the laboratory group.

Mohamed I. Mustafa and Louis Trudel, “The Impact of Cognitive Tools on the Development of the Inquiry Skills of High School Students in Physics” International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications(IJACSA), 4(9), 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.14569/IJACSA.2013.040920

@article{Mustafa2013,
title = {The Impact of Cognitive Tools on the Development of the Inquiry Skills of High School Students in Physics},
journal = {International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications},
doi = {10.14569/IJACSA.2013.040920},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.14569/IJACSA.2013.040920},
year = {2013},
publisher = {The Science and Information Organization},
volume = {4},
number = {9},
author = {Mohamed I. Mustafa and Louis Trudel}
}