Abstract
This action research project examines first year science teachers’ conceptions of scientific inquiry and their challenges in implementing inquiry-based lessons. Classroom observations and interviews represent two first-year primary school science teachers’ conceptions of science as inquiry. Because the current educational landscape emphasizes inquiry-based learning as a foundation of science education, teacher-training in Singapore focuses on augmenting the quality of inquiry-based science lessons. Through a mandatory reduced workload, first-year primary school science teachers can focus on transitioning from being student teachers to full-time teachers. A video of each teacher’s lesson was analysed using the EQUIP (Electronic Quality of Inquiry Protocol) instrument. Data analysis of the interviews involved a process of a priori coding based on the essential features of inquiry as well as grounded theory to expose the challenges the teachers faced in their enactment of inquiry-based instruction. Findings suggest that the two first-year teachers formed conceptions of inquiry through their teacher training programs. The teachers revealed three key considerations that affected their practice of inquiry: (1) assessment demands, (2) lack of resources and (3) lack of time to plan and to teach inquiry lessons. Findings in this action research project provide salient implications for other Asian countries which need to improve in-service teacher professional development programs in order to successfully enactment inquiry-based instruction.
Highlights
Along with twenty-first Century Competencies, Critical and Inventive Thinking, the Singapore Ministry Of Education (MOE) has strongly supported student-centered or inquiry-based instruction for the sake of deepening students’ science learning through three aspects: knowledge, skills and processes, and ethics and attitudes (Liew, 2013)
The method section of this study focuses on whether first-year science teachers are ready to implement inquiry-based instruction when they are situated in a school that is supportive of inquiry-based instruction
Ken believed that there are two kinds of inquiry, the ideal inquiry and the structured inquiry: “Inquiry can be very open like the kids asking a question and wanting to find out about something, but because in school we are constrained by the syllabus, we have to complete whatever that has to be taught, so the kids will not have this luxury of asking their own questions, you know, and coming out with a research plan, you know, and go and investigate and stuff like that so what I have been doing has been the very structured kind, this is something we want to find out, lets find out about this and lets explain about what happened during the investigation.”
Summary
Along with twenty-first Century Competencies, Critical and Inventive Thinking, the Singapore Ministry Of Education (MOE) has strongly supported student-centered or inquiry-based instruction for the sake of deepening students’ science learning through three aspects: knowledge, skills and processes, and ethics and attitudes (Liew, 2013). As early as 2001, the Science Syllabus foregrounded the importance of science as inquiry, declaring “The primary science syllabus aims to provide pupils with opportunities to develop skills, habits of mind, and attitudes toward learning science” (Ministry of Education (MOE), Singapore, 2004a, p.4). In 2008, science as inquiry was reemphasized in the science curriculum framework. Beginning primary school science teachers, who entered the profession over the past eight years, in Singapore were expected to uniquely teach science based on the intended inquiry-based curriculum. Science teachers’ content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge in science lagged behind that of teachers teaching mathematics
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