Having accepted the constructivist philosophy in education, starting from 2005 in Turkey, the primary aim of the
instruction has become helping students acquire skills rather than gain scientific knowledge (MEB, 2005). As a
logical consequence of this change, science learning has been viewed as construction of scientific knowledge by the
learner via observation and experimentation. Thus, the metaphor “students as scientist” (Driver, 1985) come to the
fore with its main emphasis on scientific process skills. In this line, teaching methods shifted from lecture-based
towards student-centred approaches. The traditional Turkish teaching has therefore become constructivist in a sense
that students are provided opportunity to carry out investigations to test their ideas and construct their own
knowledge, making inquiries as little scientists. Yet, on examination of the new primary science programme,
instructional activities appear do not support inquiry-based learning where students can make their own inquiries.
Experiments included in the programme are generally in recipe form on which the procedure needs to be followed is
written. Having acknowledged the importance of this type of laboratory work, we think that inquiry based learning