Abstract
The article examines the development of research skills among pre-service primary school teachers in the context of a pedagogical university. The relevance of the study is determined by the increasing demands placed on teacher education, which require future teachers to be prepared for analytical, reflective, and research activities. The study aimed to determine the dynamics of research skill development among pre-service primary school teachers during the implementation of Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL) in a pedagogical university and to assess its pedagogical potential. The study was conducted as a pedagogical experiment involving control and experimental groups and included pre-test and post-test stages. A total of 298 students from a pedagogical university participated in the study, with 152 students assigned to the control group and 146 to the experimental group. Research skills were assessed using an author-developed questionnaire consisting of 20 items covering five components of the inquiry cycle: Orientation, Conceptualization, Investigation, Conclusion, and Discussion. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, independent-samples and paired-samples t-tests, as well as effect size estimates. The results demonstrated statistically significant positive changes across all components of research skills in both the control and experimental groups (p < .001). However, the independent-samples t-test revealed no statistically significant differences between the groups at the post-test stage (p > .05), while Cohen’s d values indicated small between-group effect sizes. These findings do not support a conclusion regarding the statistical superiority of IBL over traditional instruction. Therefore, the findings are interpreted not as evidence of the comparative advantage of IBL, but rather in terms of its potential as one of the pedagogical approaches that can be employed to support the development of research skills among pre-service primary school teachers.