We documented significant improvement in students’ confidence to use science literacy
skills after participation in the inquiry labs. We did not observe differences in self-efficacy in students of different gender or ethnicity. Interestingly, when we compared total confidence
scores between students taught using the inquiry laboratories or a more traditional
approach, we found that students in inquiry labs gained less confidence through the
semester than students in the more traditional labs (Figure 3). In fact, inquiry lab students
reported lower levels of confidence even for tasks such as explaining and writing about
biological ideas, though they had much greater experience with these tasks (Table 3). There
are at least two questions that we need to address to understand why students in the
inquiry labs who demonstrated greater science literacy skills than students in the traditional
labs don’t feel confident using these skills: (1) whether the results of student’s confidence
levels are consistent with what we would predict due to their experiences in the two lab
settings, and (2) what criteria do students use to define their own abilities.