The science education literature was examined in order to identify the methodologies that various authors considered to characterise inquiry teaching. On the basis of this examination, a new classroom environment instrument, the Is This an Inquiring Classroom or ITIC was developed. The final version of the ITIC contained forty items in five different scales, Freedom in Practical Work, Communication, Interpretation of Data, Science Stories and Uncertainty in Science.The Actual and Preferred Forms of the ITIC were administered to 2,207 Grade 7-12 students and 65 teachers from 15 different schools. The results of this investigation showed that both students and teachers would prefer there to be higher levels of inquiry behaviours in Tasmanian science classrooms, with teachers indicating a preference for significantly higher levels than students. The perceptions of different sub-groups within the student population were also analysed.An examination of the Tasmanian curriculum documents showed that they supported the use of inquiry teaching methodologies, as defined by the ITIC scales. From the above investigations it was concluded that it would be desirable for there to be higher levels of inquiry methodologies in Tasmanian science classes, and that the production of the ITIC provides a means of monitoring and measuring any change.

In recent years, non-fullerene acceptors (NFAs) have attracted enormous interest in the field of organic solar cells (OSCs), they improve power conversion efficiency (PCE) compared to the classical fullerene acceptor. In this work, OSCs based on PBDB-T as the donor material and the very well-known NFA ITIC, along with its fluorinated and chlorinated derivatives (IT-2F, IT-4F, IT-2Cl, IT-4Cl) were fabricated to investigate the effect of the halogenation end group on the photovoltaic parameters. Optical characterization reveals that both chlorination and fluorination are effective in downshifting the molecular energy levels and redshifting the absorption spectra, which results in higher Jsc but lower Voc compared to pristine ITIC. In addition, the halogenated ITIC device exhibited enhanced FF and PCE. Various optoelectronic techniques were also used to investigate the charge recombination dynamics and charge extraction process. It has been found that (IT-2F, IT-2Cl) show suppressed monomolecular recombination compared to di-substituted NFA (IT-4F, IT-4Cl). Furthermore, fluorinated ITIC has a longer charge carrier recombination lifetime but a lower carrier extraction rate. Lastly, the best-performing device from the preceding component mixtures PBDB-T:IT-2F was exposed to thermal annealing at different stages of the fabrication process to investigate how annealing affects the photovoltaic parameters. According to our findings, both post and 2-stage annealing improve FF and PCE, but the latter is even more beneficial. In further studies, the annealing effect on the HTL layer (MoOx) has also been investigated. Annealing improved the MoOx’s work function, resulting in higher internal electric field that thereby facilitated hole extraction, as demonstrated by TPC where 2-stage annealed devices exhibited a faster carrier extraction rate.