Student Teachers and Beginning Teachers' Understandings of Scientific Inquiry

This study examined the knowledge and practices of scientific inquiry displayed by three student teachers and two beginning teachers at secondary levels. Observations using the instrument of OTOP designed by the research team of OCEPT (Oregon Collaborative for Excellent in the Preparation of Teachers) generalized similar teaching strategies of scientific inquiry between student and beginning teachers, such as using group work for students' first hand experience, using concrete materials for experimentation or visual tools for demonstration, using questions for factual knowledge mainly without opportunities to understand how scientific knowledge is constructed. Those scientific inquiry activities were very confirmative ones to follow the steps without opportunities of understanding nature of science or nature of scientific inquiry. However, all participants in this study hold knowledge of scientific inquiry envisioned by the National Science Education Standards [NSES] (NRC, 1996), where students identify their hypothesis, use critical and logical thinking, and consider alternative explanations through argumentation as well as experimentation. An inconsistent relationship between participating teachers knowledge and practices about scientific inquiry resulted from their lack of pedagogy skills of implementing it in the classroom. Providing opportunities for these teachers to reflect on their beliefs and practices about scientific inquiry was recommended for the future study. Furthermore, increasing college faculty interest in new teaching approaches for upgrading the content knowledge of student teachers and beginning teachers was recommended as a solution, since those teachers showed evidence of influence by college faculties at universities in their pedagogy skills.