Clustering Analysis Reveals Authentic Science Inquiry Trajectories Among Undergraduates

Science education reforms in the United States call for an emphasis on teaching of scientific practices, such as inquiry. Previous work examined expert versus novice practices in authentic science inquiry and found although experts have fairly consistent inquiry strategies, novices exist on a continuum. In this paper, we extend our previous qualitative work to quantitatively analyze differences in inquiry practices among novices. Using clustering analysis, we found that non-science majors who performed simple investigations tended to cluster together and biology majors who performed complex investigations also tended to cluster together. We observed two additional clusters that contain both non-science majors and biology majors, but who performed distinct inquiry strategies. This raises some critical questions about how to pedagogically target students within each cluster.