Hopefully, students exposed to any lab course would have developed greater self-confidence
in their ability to do science over the course of the semester, and some of the items, or
scientific tasks, on the instrument were generic enough to increase equally in students in
both labs. However, students would have practiced certain tasks significantly more
depending on the type of lab in which they participated. For many of these items students
responded in ways we would have predicted, e.g., students in the traditional labs had much
more practice reading facts about biology from the introductory material in their lab
manuals while studying for their weekly pre-lab quizzes. They also had much greater
exposure to reading and following procedures from their manuals. It was therefore not
surprising that traditional students showed higher gains in confidence for these types of
tasks. The inquiry lab students were required to write numerous reports describing their
findings, so it was not expected that they had higher gains in confidence in writing or
critiquing a lab report.