Inquiry-based Teaching and Learning in the Context of Pre-service Teachers' Science Education

Abstract

Inquiry-based learning model relies on the idea that individuals are able to learn by researching real problems and questions. It promotes science as a way of thinking and an attitude of mind. It is a multifaceted activity that involves making observations, posing hypothesis, making experiments to test it, and giving explanations. This study is in the field of science teacher education. It was conducted to investigate pre-service primary teachers’ difficulties regarding the implementation of the inquiry-based teaching. The sample consists of 74 pre-service teachers’ teaching scenarios for electromagnetism; they were collected in the context of an Introductory Didactics of Science Laboratory course in which participants experienced inquiry-based teaching and learning. Content analysis of the teaching scenarios was followed in order to analyze the data. The results show that pre-service teachers have some difficulties in implementing inquiry-based teaching. Their difficulties mainly focus on the formulation of the research hypothesis and the designing of the corresponding experiment in order to test the hypothesis. The findings implied that although pre-service teachers recognize experimentation as an important part of science teaching, they had difficulties designing experiments that test particular hypotheses related to the teaching objectives. These findings contribute to the field of science teacher education, shedding light to the difficulties pre-service primary teachers have in implementing inquiry-based teaching model. Particularly, pre-service primary teachers should be offered a much bigger amount of opportunities to engage in authentic inquiries before they are ready to implement inquiry-base teaching in their classes.