REAL LIFE EXPERIENCE IN INQUIRY-BASED EARTH AND SPACE SCIENCE INSTRUCTION

Science teachers play an important role in improving science literacy of their students. In achieving and building students' interest and literacy about science, teachers must have an appropriate approach to be used in teaching. In teaching science, students must be active and participative in the learning process. Engaging students in variety of activities can help them in constructing their own knowledge by experiencing and observing results of the experiment. Teachers must provide real world experiences for students to engage with around global issues. This took the form of service-learning projects emphasizing issues of global concern, or working in teams to devise and debate solutions to real-world problems. Notably, these activities were student-centered and inquiry-based. Teachers also incorporated their own cross-cultural experiences into the classroom through informal conversation, discussions, around artifacts and photos, and lesson plans that incorporated knowledge gained and relationship built though their global experiences. The need for utilizing real life experiences in science teaching is a must in today's classroom as the new generations of learners are ready to work with the different global issues and concerns of which can play an important role in the learning process. However, the utilization of real life experiences in science instruction grows as a measure when teachers are able to develop an engaging and positive learning environment for learners. With this, teachers should carefully plan how to utilize the students' real life experiences efficiently and effectively in inquiry-based science instruction to enhance more the teaching-learning process. The focus of this study was to determine the real life experience in inquiry-based earth and space science instruction in public secondary schools in Batangas City. The descriptive method of research was applied in the study, with the questionnaire as the main data gathering instrument responded to by 102 science teachers. Based on the analysis, it was revealed that real life experiences in science areas were moderately utilized by the students while teachers applied inquiry-based learning activities along its phases of exploration, concept introduction, and concept application to a moderate extent. It was recommended that the proposed learning plans be used to enhance science instruction and an instrument or assessment tool may be developed to determine the impact of utilization of real life experiences in teaching-learning process.