Page 142 - Empowering pre-service teachers through inquiry - Lidewij van Katwijk

Chapter 6
the assessment of research projects and the intention to develop an inquiry stance aiming to improve practice and professional development. The model in Figure 6.1 might be transferable to these institutes of higher education. In those cases, specific application and description of levels of required inquiry competences and appropriate indicators for improvement of practice could be designed.
The second implication concerns teacher educators implementing teaching activities to stimulate the development of pre-service teachers’ inquiry stance. Teacher educators should explicitly emphasise the intangible elements of inquiry, such as developing an inquiry habit of mind, in their communications with students more often. They should instigate curiosity, stimulate critical thinking and enable sharing of findings to improve practice. For example, a small-scale inquiry project for pre-service teachers about stimulating the inquiry habit of mind in children could provide the opportunity to deepen the concept of an inquiry habit of mind for these teachers and for them to reflect on the characteristics of their own inquiry habit of mind.
To achieve the intended coherence, all teacher educators must engage in frequent and ongoing dialogue about the purpose and value of pre-service teacher inquiry and its implementation. For appropriate feedback to pre-service teachers on the development of the inquiry competences, teacher educators require an in-depth understanding of inquiry versus research, knowledge about previous steps, about the intended ultimate learning outcomes and about possible next steps. Thus, they need insight into teaching activities to develop the inquiry stance throughout the entire programme, not just their own course. Furthermore, continuous professional development of teacher educators is required in their own inquiry stance and the supervision of pre-service teacher inquiry, including calibration sessions regarding assessment on development of the inquiry stance.
Reinforcing the culture of inquiry in primary schools is the third implication. In the Netherlands, a minority of primary schools were subsidised to combine practitioner research with the education of pre-service teachers for the purpose of school development (so-called academic primary schools). The connections of academic primary schools with teacher education institutes are better and the inquiry culture is more developed than regular primary schools (Van den Bergh et al., 2017). Reinforcement of the culture of inquiry in regular primary schools, and schools under pressure because of educational challenges, might improve the quality of education in the Netherlands. Networks between institutes for teacher education and primary schools focused on professionalisation of (pre-service) teachers, and improvement of
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