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asked them to participate in their defense. The last course, student teaching, included a student-teaching essay, an interview asking prospective teachers to reflect upon their teaching, which was reviewed qualitatively, and the submission of an inquiry lesson on video that was later coded with the IAR to examine the extent of their inquiry teaching (n=11).
The interviews were conducted and analyzed during the student teaching semester and qualitative coding using the constant-comparative method (Glesne, 1998). The interview questions were reviewed and approved by The University of Iowa Human Subject's Committee and all participants from this data collection agreed to the study. Interviews were conducted with one researcher and one student at a time; however the audiotaped and transcribed data was also analyzed by another researcher who had not participated in the interviews, for verification of emergent themes. The qualitative data were used to triangulate with the quantitative data gathered with the intent of elaborating and bringing more depth to the quantitative data (Hara, 1995; Liebscher, 1998; Morse, 1991).
Limitations included a small sample size as well as the possible bias of the researcher being a former instructor of the students interviewed. Another limitation is the use of a researcher- constructed rubric (IAR) in its first use in this study. Additional testing should be done in order to further determine reliability and validity.
Findings and Implications
Examining artifacts from Methods 1 (pre-), Methods 1 (post-), Methods 3 (RBF), and transcribed interviews, the researcher applied the IAR to track student understandings of inquiry and whether those understandings changed over time. This data best