New Perspectives in Science Education
Effects of Implementing a Model-Based Inquiry Sequence on In-Service Primary School Teachers’ Perceptions
Ana Amat González, Universidad de Almería (Spain)
María Martínez Chico, Universidad de Almería (Spain)
María Rut Jiménez-Liso, Universidad de Almería (Spain)
Abstract
Science educators and policy makers intent to widespread implementation of inquiry in science education due to its advantages to promote not only conceptual learning but also scientific practices achieving students’ motivation. The growing concern about the existent distance between the advances of educational research and the instruction usually developed in classrooms, leads us to focus on in-service teachers' perceptions, by reducing such distance from the implementation of inquiry-based teaching proposals in Primary classrooms and the analysis of teachers' perceptions when their students experience them.
The present study shows the analysis of interviews with three in-service teachers, before and after the implementation of a sequence through a Model-Based Inquiry (MBI) approach focused on constructing the model of living being, in their classrooms, with their own students. Our purpose is knowing the teachers’ perceptions about this approach, analyzing both, the collected information about how they usually teach science (before the implementation), and the declared perceptions after witnessing the implementation of the sequence.
Results show that all the in-service teachers who recognized in the initial interview that they did not know anything about the features of the inquiry-based approaches neither have never experienced it, after the implementation of sequence, they are able to recognize, its own characteristics (such as students are involved in solving scientific questions, construct explanations or models, look for evidence, analyze the obtained information, communicate and discuss ideas, and revise and use their explanations or models in other situations). The analysis of teachers' perceptions when witnessing how their students experience an inquiry-based sequence allow us to know the advantages and disadvantages they perceive, as well as to identify the obstacles that emerge when we try to transfer this kind of sequences, to other in-service teachers interested in incorporating scientific practices in their classrooms.
Keywords: Inquiry-Based Science Education, In-service Primary School teachers, interviews;
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