Research skills in primary education: a systematic review of strategies, assessment, and outcomes
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23456454Keywords:
research skills, primary education, scientific inquiryAbstract
Research skills in primary education enable pupils to formulate questions, anticipate explanations, design procedures, record data, interpret evidence, and communicate conclusions. This systematic review aimed to analyze how these skills are developed and assessed in primary education and which teaching strategies show favorable results. PRISMA 2020 criteria were followed, and a structured search of literature published from 2020 to September 2026 was conducted, with bibliographic verification through ERIC, SciELO, Crossref, and publisher websites. The final corpus comprised 25 empirical studies. The synthesis shows a predominance of guided inquiry, supplemented by digital resources, outdoor activities, project-based learning, STEM, worked examples, and explicit teaching of epistemic aspects. Improvements were more frequently observed in observation, recording, question formulation, and basic analysis, whereas control of variables, experimental planning, and evidence-based conclusions remained challenging. The review concludes that research skills should be developed through recurrent inquiry experiences, gradually adjusted scaffolding, and age-appropriate assessment instruments. It also identifies the need for longitudinal designs, stronger methodological comparability, and more evidence from Latin American primary education.
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