Keyword: «cross-curricular skills»

The development of students’ research competence remains one of the priorities for modern school education. However, in practice, it is often carried out mainly outside regular classes and in a fragmented way, while within lessons it is reduced to performing elementary operations. This article analyses hypothesizing as a general learning skill, the mastery of which can contribute to the development of schoolchildren’s research competence. The purpose of the article is to theoretically substantiate and describe a concept of the step-by-step development of the hypothesizing skill among secondary school students. The leading methodological basis for designing the concept is the systems activity-based approach, which allows hypothesizing to be considered as a meaningful, motivated, and verifiable action carried out in the process of solving cognitive tasks. Teaching to advance hypotheses is examined as a means of developing specific aspects of research competence in the course of learning and cognitive activities. The proposed pedagogical model includes goal-oriented, content-related, procedural, and methodological components, as well as diagnostic criteria and pedagogical conditions for integration into the learning process. The model reflects the relationship between mastering hypothesizing techniques and the development of cognitive, operational, and personal components of research competency, which makes it possible to align the development of skills enabling hypothesis building with the assimilation of specific subject content. The theoretical significance of the study lies in clarifying the role of hypothesizing as a learning skill and in substantiating the possibility of its purposeful development as a cross-curricular competence. The practical significance of the study is reflected in the model’s orientation toward classroom implementation (without the need for radical restructuring of lessons) and in the possibility of its flexible application in various educational contexts, provided that appropriate pedagogical conditions are created. The developed model can be employed in pedagogical experiments aimed at testing its effectiveness and assessing its potential for application in educational practice.