Inquiry Pedagogy and the Preservice Science Teacher By Lisa Mar ...

classrooms rose in the first three experiences and decreased during the student teaching semester. Video data of inquiry lessons correspond to this slight downward trend. Before the student teaching seminar, students detailed their plans for inquiry teaching and practiced inquiry pedagogy in a field experience, however the realities of the student teaching internship, with its many pressures, as indicated in the “Themes of Perceived Roadblocks to Inquiry” data (p. xlii), resulted in some students simply choosing not to include an inquiry lesson in their assigned videotaping segment. By examining the student teachers’ videotapes, we see that although prospective teachers are capable of teaching an inquiry lesson in the methods course, during the time of student teaching, they were inconsistent with their abilities to implement inquiry pedagogy and, at times, simply chose not to document any attempt to do so. This choice is echoed in their interviews, as some reported that they have not yet added inquiry as a regular part of their teaching during student teaching. Implementation takes time as well as support.

As it is well known that student teachers typically revert somewhat to more traditional forms of teaching (Akerson and Hanuscin, 2007; Lew, 2001), the interview questions were written to focus on prospective teachers’ descriptions of their own teaching, and whether or not they used inquiry teaching methods and why. The prospective teachers described a series of cases where mentor teachers either embraced or did not embrace inquiry teaching. Classroom management, being a concern, also factored into whether they felt comfortable trying out an inquiry investigation. Since most of the prospective teachers had never seen inquiry modeled in their field placements, choosing to implement inquiry was a risk for them. A complete list of themes generated from the student teaching interviews is provided below.