This paper was also presented by Chris Schunn at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, April 11-15, 2005, in Montrèal, Québec, Canada.

This paper contrasted performance overall and by gender, ethnicity, and SES for middle school students learning science through traditional scripted inquiry versus a design-based, systems approach, over a 4-week period using authentic engineering design methods. The contrast study took place in the 8th grade of an urban, public school district, with the systems approach implemented in 26 science classes and the scripted inquiry approach implemented in a contrast group of 20 science classes. The results suggest that a systems design approach for teaching science concepts has superior performance in terms of knowledge gain achievements in core science concepts, engagement, and retention when compared with a guided inquiry approach.