Pre-service early childhood teachers’ beliefs that influence their intention to use inquiry-based learning methods

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this study we investigated pre-service early childhood teachers’ (referred to as student teachers) beliefs that might influence their intention to use inquiry-based learning methods that have been taught on an inquiry-based science course. During this course, the student teachers (N = 17) participated in a number of classroom experiments concerning phenomena that are part of the curriculum of early childhood education, focusing on pupil’s conceptual representations using the inquiry-based approach. Moreover, the student teachers were explicitly taught the reasoning of Control of Variables Strategy (CVS) as an aspect of inquiry. A four-item open-type questionnaire on the classroom experiments that were approached through the CVS method, was used to investigate student teachers’ understanding of this method. Moreover, an eight-item open-type questionnaire and a four-item Likert scale questionnaire were used to investigate student teachers’ intention to use the CVS method in their teaching practice, focusing on attitude, normative and control socio-psychological factors. The results show the categories of student teachers’ beliefs, leading to teaching implications, and indicate a tentative relationship with an indeterminate direction. Specifically, those student teachers who understood the CVS method were influenced by control factors for its implementation, whereas the other student teachers were influenced by attitude and/or normative factors.