The aim of this project is to develop an inquiry skills measure for Year 8 students (13- to 14-year-olds) in a secondary school in Victoria, Australia. The measure is to be used to examine the readiness of the students to undertake a learning inquiry program in Year 9 on sustainability issues. The program combines sustainability education with 21st century skills learning, which is pertinent not only to the Australian curriculum (Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, 2015) but also education focus in Europe (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, 2005) and in many other parts of the world (Ananiadou & Claro, 2009; Griffin & Care, 2015). This paper describes the development of the inquiry skills measure which provides information about the adjustments that may need to be made to the learning inquiry program through identifying the learning needs of the students.

To provide more context, the learning inquiry program is designed for Year 9 students (14- to 15-year-olds) and aims to promote 21st century skills (Binkley et al., 2012) and to encourage students to make informed choices and positive actions around sustainable living. During the program, students embark on an intensive four-week period of research and investigation in order to answer the question: "How can we think globally and act locally for a sustainable future?" In teams and small groups, the students will learn to generate relevant questions and seek information to answer those questions while exploring topics such as production and consumption, energy, transport, people and population, and biodiversity. At the end of the four-week inquiry cycle, students present their understanding of the topics at an exhibition that is open to the public.

In light of the scope of the Year 9 learning inquiry program, the readiness measure developed particularly focuses on assessing the kinds of connections that students are trying to make when processing and making sense of information. The construct is captured by the notion of epistemic cognition, which relates to a person’s theory of knowledge (epistemological beliefs) and the processes involved in the definition, acquisition, validation, and use of knowledge (Greene, Azevedo, & Torney-Purta, 2008; Grix, 2002). It is operationalised for the measure through examining the underlying evaluative criteria on which decisions of a person are dependent when trying to make sense of and act on information. Epistemic cognition has been theorised to underpin inquiry skills (Sandoval, 2005) and is closely related to reasoning and critical thinking (King & Kitchener, 2004). The construct overlaps with comprehension (understanding of information), but goes beyond that to involve reasoning, evaluative judgment, and decision-making.

Five levels of epistemic cognition ordered in increasing sophistication were theorised, beginning with the lowest level where a person engages with the information/task in a superficial manner and progresses to more complex connections a person might make when processing information (e.g., making comparison or examining assumptions). The levels theorised is consistent with existing developmental theories of epistemic cognition which tend to begin with a more "black-and-white" or dualistic view of the world as the starting level and approaching a more relativistic stance at the more sophisticated level (Felder & Brent, 2004). A rationale for this particular formulation of the progression is because the topic of sustainability involves complex issues that often do not have straightforward solutions. For example, recycling might help to reduce wastes but may have the unintended consequence of requiring the use of more resources (e.g., water and energy) than using raw or primary materials. To contemplate such complex issues therefore requires relational and analytical thinking beyond personal preference or "common sense".

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