Experience and Reflection: Preservice Science Teachers’ Capacity for Teaching Inquiry

Source: Journal of Science Teacher Education, Volume 19, Number 5 / October 2008, pages 477-494

In this paper, the authors explore the relationship between preservice teachers’ inquiry experience and their capacity to reflect on the challenges involved in implementing inquiry into classrooms. The authors draw on the personal narratives of preservice science teachers enrolled in science instruction courses. Preservice teachers with extensive inquiry experiences perceive implementation challenges principally in terms of teaching and student learning.
This contrasts with the perceptions of preservice teachers with limited inquiry experience for whom the main concerns relate to the negative perceptions of others, time, the curriculum, and materials.
By identifying these perceptions, it may be possible to develop courses that assist limited and moderate-experience preservice teachers’ move toward the perceptions of their more inquiry experienced colleagues.