Page 136 - Empowering pre-service teachers through inquiry - Lidewij van Katwijk
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                                Chapter 6
 continue conducting practitioner research. This finding is similar to Griffioen’s (2018) study about Dutch students in a professional bachelor’s degree programme. Kowalczuk-Walędziak et al. (2019) and Volk (2010) also found little evidence that learned research skills and knowledge were used in the teaching profession after completing teacher education. Using the data of the focus groups with teacher educators and pre-service teachers in the Netherlands and Australia (Chapters 3 and 4), we unravelled three main reasons for this disconnect:
(1) theexpectationthatnewlyqualifiedteacherswillfocusonteaching—and not on practitioner inquiry—during their induction periods, which is in line with concepts of professional development of early career teachers (e.g., Fuller, 1969; Louws, Van Veen, Meirink & Van Driel, 2017). This focus, however, does not totally contradict an inquiry stance.
(2) the formal way pre-service teacher inquiry is taught and assessed (e.g., having to write a literature review, a proposal and a report), which can be time-consuming and demanding (Kowalczuk-Walędziak et al., 2019; Maaranen, 2009; Reis-Jorge, 2007).
(3) the lack of research culture and knowledge in most primary schools (Gitlin, et al., 1999; Yuan & Burns, 2017). Pre-service teacher respondents in our study indicated that they would prefer to work in school contexts in which other colleagues share an inquiry habit of mind. Van den Bergh, Ros, Vermeulen and Rohaan (2017) show a positive relationship between teachers’ inquiry experience during teacher education and the self-assessment of several aspects of their inquiry habit of mind and literature use, which are part of the research culture in primary schools. The growing number of teachers with research or inquiry experience from bachelor’s and master’s degree programmes might influence this research culture and the teachers’ intention to conduct practitioner inquiry in the next decade.
Despite these hurdles to conducting practitioner inquiry in the future profession, newly qualified teachers need not consider them a problem as long as they can use inquiry competences or show an inquiry stance. The research culture in the school will determine the expression and further development of the inquiry stance of newly qualified teachers. Ownership in relation to the teaching approach and the role of the school leader seem to be most important (cf. Baan et al., 2018).
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