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Improving Science Teachers’ Views about Scientific Inquiry

Reflections from a Professional Development Program Aiming to Advance Science Centre-School Curricula Integration

  • SI: nature of science
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Abstract

The present study specifically focuses on science teachers’ views about scientific inquiry and their use of scientific inquiry in their lesson plans, which were prepared at a professional development workshop designed for better utilization of science centers (SCs). As an impact evaluation research, qualitative data was collected from 41 purposively selected volunteer science teachers. The project team provided the participants with intense instruction in inquiry, and fostered them to learn nature of science and nature of scientific inquiry explicitly. The participants designed lesson plans that integrate school science curricula with exhibits at SCs before and after the workshop. An open-ended questionnaire about the views about scientific inquiry (VASI) was administered before and after the workshop, and teachers’ post-lesson plans were analyzed to detect the presence of scientific inquiry aspects. The majority of teachers exhibited improved views about scientific inquiry based on the VASI instrument. Also, lesson plan analyses indicated that teachers, who showed more improvement in VASI, included more scientific inquiry (SI) elements in their post-lesson plans. It was observed that science teachers’ lesson plans are limited in terms of teaching science in line with real scientific inquiries in SCs to make students learn about the nature of scientific inquiry while learning science. Only two groups embedded SI properly in the SC-oriented lesson plans, and teachers rather used inquiry-based methods of teaching (e.g., argumentation, predict-observe-explain) and process skills (e.g., questioning, explanations). Accordingly, further studies are suggested to develop a specific pedagogical content knowledge framework for teaching with/in SCs.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank to Dr. Yasemin Özdem and Dr. Uygar Kanlı for their valuable contribution to this study. The authors gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Turkey Ministry of Education, and Gazi University at Ankara, and The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey. Special thanks also to teachers, graduate students, and administrators whose collaboration was crucial to the successful implementation of this study.

Funding

This study is funded by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey under project number 114K646. Some parts of this paper were presented at NARST 2018 annual conference in Atlanta, USA.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Management, Atılım University, Rector’s Building, Room Number: 202, Kızılcaşar Mahallesi, İncek, Ankara, Turkey

    Ceyhan Cigdemoglu

  2. Faculty of Education, Gazi University, Ankara, Turkey

    Fitnat Köseoğlu

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  1. Ceyhan Cigdemoglu
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  2. Fitnat Köseoğlu
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Correspondence to Ceyhan Cigdemoglu.

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All teachers’ participation in this workshop was approved by the Ministry of Education, and an Ethical committee approval was received from the same Ministry as stakeholder of the project.

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Cigdemoglu, C., Köseoğlu, F. Improving Science Teachers’ Views about Scientific Inquiry. Sci & Educ 28, 439–469 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-019-00054-0

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