Examining Pre-service Elementary Teachers' Views on Science Inquiry Teaching during Peer Teaching Practice

Abstract

For teachers' conceptions and understandings are critical to their decision making and classroom practice, this study attempts to understand pre-service elementary teachers' views and practices of science inquiry during peer teaching practice. Fifteen 4th year university students in teacher education program participated in peer teaching practice. Their teaching and reflective discussion were video and audio recorded and written lesson plans were collected for data analysis. Five science teacher educators individually looked into the data and shared their comments and interpretations on pre-service teachers' views and practice. The study findings suggest that pre-service teachers emphasized the importance of providing students with motivating resources in the beginning of lesson, employing certain inquiry teaching models, the process of predicting and dis/proving via experiment, and teachers' minimal intervention as the important features of inquiry teaching. Science teacher educators emphasized that it is critical to help children understand inquiry questions in the beginning of inquiry process, to be mindful of children's problem solving and critical thinking rather than following instruction models or simply going through prediction and test process. They also commented that teachers' guidance could lead a good inquiry process in classroom practice, not always interfering students' inquiry. Based on the findings, the study suggests science teacher educators need to understand what and how pre-service teachers view and practice science inquiry teaching and consider these as useful resources where they can start effective teaching for pre-service teachers at the university level.