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

entrenched and they did not want to change; 8) the sequential nature of their inquiry texts locked teachers into the order of the book; 9) they felt a lack of control of what was going on in the classroom; and 10) the materials required were too expensive.

With the advent of the NSES (NRC, 1996) another reason teachers were reluctant to use inquiry, perhaps reflecting the teachers’ feeling of lack of control in the classroom, was because open-inquiry began with student questions. How could one assure that the science standards for their school district would be met if students began with their own questions? Certain content topics were required to be taught. The secondary science methods instructors at The University of Iowa implemented a method introduced by John Dunkhase (2000) and found that if the teacher began with a guided approach, a specific content standard could be addressed, then paving the way for students to continue with their own questions in the following open-inquiry investigation.

After additional refinement, Dunkhase termed the approach coupled-inquiry, meaning that both the guided- and open-inquiry approaches were used consecutively followed by an assessment.

The model for coupled-inquiry cycle includes: 1) An invitation to inquiry, 2) teacher-initiated “guided-inquiry,” 3) student-initiated “open-inquiry,” 4) inquiry resolution, and 5) assessment (figure 1.1).

Questions began to emerge regarding the secondary students’ transition from being relatively unaware of inquiry to finally trying to implement inquiry teaching strategies in their practical experiences resulting in the foci of this study.

Historically, teachers were reluctant to teach using inquiry methods for a variety of reasons previously discussed (Costenson & Lawson, 1986). A study by Damnjanovic (1999) found that secondary preservice teachers seem to have additional difficulties compared to practicing teachers in the way that they have more>