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Heritage education is currently a consolidated discipline, which advocate for a holistic vision of heritage. In this sense, this research aims to study the heritage conceptions, perceptions and learning context amongst primary and secondary students, comprehensively and fully.

This research focuses in Andorra, a country in the Pyrenees, where there are three different education systems. This allowed the study to obtain a sample of 1,235 primary and secondary students, throughout a structured questionnaire that was previously designed and validated ad hoc.

In general terms, the results show that around half of the students have a holistic view of heritage; however, natural and historical elements are highlighted as the ones they learn from the most, especially through visits in situ. Moreover, the students’ perceptions of heritage show that over a 90% of students believe it is important to safeguard because it is connected to nature and culture preservation.

This research is included in a greater scope project that also considers other agents in the education community that belong to formal and non-formal spheres. In addition, it is the first investigation where the field of heritage education is studied globally in an entire country, considering primary and secondary education students.

Scientific inquiry is a leading methodology that promotes science process skills to acquire scientific knowledge. There is evidence that primary school teachers have difficulties introducing inquiry-based activities in their classrooms. Hence, adequate teacher instruction in inquiry methodology is important to apply inquiry-based activities in school science lessons. This work aims to analyse if pre-service teachers succeeded in developing scientific knowledge and scientific skills through the application of an inquiry laboratory activity.

This article is presented as a case study developed in a group of 82 pre-service teachers. This research methodology involved qualitative and quantitative data.

The results demonstrate that pre-service teachers could improve their scientific skills and knowledge through inquiry-based laboratory activity.

The present study assesses not only the scientific knowledge but also if students can acquire scientific skills by doing the inquiry laboratory activity and if these skills are related to low-order cognitive skills or high-order cognitive skills.