increased significantly. This occurred regardless of the prior experience level of the
teachers in inquiry and of their number of years teaching experience.
56.4 Conclusions and Implications
The primary objective of the SAILS collaboration was to support teachers across
Europe to not only teach through inquiry but also to be confident and competent in
assessment of inquiry skills and competencies. The SAILS project has achieved this
objective through a unified approach of implementing three key components for
transforming classroom practice, i.e. teacher education, curriculum and assessment
development around an IBSE pedagogy. The SAILS TEPs in inquiry and assess-
ment have increased teachers’confidence in changing their classroom practice,
have demonstrated the value of an inquiry approach on students’learning, and have
described appropriate strategies for assessing inquiry skills and competences.
This sustained collaboration has resulted in the production of a collection of
SAILS Inquiry and Assessment Units—which showcase the benefits of adopting
inquiry approaches in classroom practice, exemplify how assessment practices can
be embedded in inquiry lessons and illustrate the variety of assessment
opportunities/processes available to science teachers. In particular, the units provide
clear examples for teachers of how inquiry skills (developing hypotheses, working
collaboratively, forming coherent arguments and planning investigations) can be
assessed, alongside content knowledge, scientific literacy and scientific reasoning
and illustrate the benefits of various types of assessments. These SAILS Inquiry and
Assessment Units have been trialled in over 100 second level classrooms, each unit
across at least three different countries. Feedback from teachers has been collected
in the form of case study reports. As demonstrated in the case studies, the SAILS
units can be used to focus on the main skills identified but also can be adapted to
focus on particular skills that the teacher may wish to develop. The assessment
criteria can also be modified to suit the student age and their experience level with
inquiry.
The evaluation of the SAILS TEPs indicated that by explicitly addressing the
key barriers in implementing IBSE-oriented assessment practices in classrooms as
perceived by the teachers, the SAILS approach has equipped teachers to actively
engage in the transformation of traditional approaches to teaching and assessing
science towards IBSE and formative-assessment practices in their own classrooms
and schools. However, several challenges need to be faced by teachers to develop
their own assessment strategies and this remains the major impediment for teachers
in implementing alternative assessment approaches in their classrooms.
In conclusion, the key outcomes from this pan-European collaboration are that
teaching and assessment should be considered as a dynamic and iterative process in
order to effectively support inquiry learning in the science classroom. Learning
836 O.E. Finlayson and E. McLoughlin