A Person‐Centred Analysis of Experimentation Skills and Conceptual Understanding During Inquiry Learning

Background Inquiry learning relies on students' engagement, which is driven by their cognitive and motivational characteristics. The role of student characteristics for inquiry learning has been sparingly investigated and mainly from a variable‐centred perspective. Objectives In contrast, this study employed a person‐centred approach to investigate the conjoint influence of students' cognitive and motivational characteristics in relation to experimentation skills and conceptual understanding during guided computer‐assisted inquiry learning. Methods Secondary school students ( N = 110, M age = 12.07) attended a lesson about photosynthesis and worked on a structured inquiry task individually. Students' cognitive and motivational characteristics were measured by their prior knowledge, self‐concept, and interest in biology. Experimentation skills were measured by the proportion of controlled experiments that students conducted, and conceptual understanding comprised students' written argumentation and conceptual knowledge post‐test scores. Results and Conclusions We identified three distinct clusters, based on students' cognitive and motivational characteristics—Underestimating (high prior knowledge, low motivation), Struggling (low prior knowledge, low motivation), and Strong (high prior knowledge, high motivation). Although Struggling students conducted a significantly higher proportion of controlled experiments than Strong students, Underestimating and Strong students outperformed them in the conceptual knowledge post‐test. We found no differences in argumentation quality. These findings suggest that highly guided tasks might not be equally suitable for students with different levels of interest, prior knowledge, and self‐concept and attest to the benefits of using person‐oriented methods. Furthermore, students' motivation needs to be considered together with their prior knowledge when designing guidance for inquiry learning.