Page 111 - Empowering pre-service teachers through inquiry - Lidewij van Katwijk

Relationship among quality of inquiry, quality of teaching and perceptions toward inquiry
teaching than about research and inquiry, we aim to examine student profiles defined by teaching quality and inquiry quality. The associated research questions we investigate are as follows:
1. What are pre-service teachers’ perceptions of the value of pre-service teacher inquiry?
2. What is the most important learning outcome of pre-service teacher inquiry, according to pre-service teachers?
3. a. How does the quality of capstone inquiry projects relate to the quality of
teaching exhibited by pre-service teachers?
b. Which pre-service teacher profiles emerge, reflecting the correlation of 5 inquiry quality and teaching quality?
4. How do these groups differ in their perceptions of pre-service teacher inquiry?
Context
The context of this study is initial teacher education for primary schools, a bachelor’s degree programme at a university of applied sciences in the Netherlands. The research component in the programme was introduced ten years ago. During the four years of teacher education (240 European credits [ECs]), pre-service teachers spend 70 ECs in practice and 30 ECs on pre-service teacher research–related learning activities. In their final year, the pre-service teachers teach their own group three days a week for 20 weeks. In this period, they also collect data for their pre-service teacher inquiry project, which covers 15 ECs. Pre-service teachers’ practical work is assessed by the supervising teacher and one teacher educator.
The purpose of pre-service teacher inquiry in the Netherlands is to develop five connected competences: (1) research knowledge, (2) knowledge about research in the domain, (3) research skills, (4) application of findings of previous research in practice and (5) an inquiry habit of mind (Van Katwijk, Jansen, & Van Veen, 2019b). Pre-service teacher inquiry is taught in a teaching-learning trajectory over four years, in which all research activities are closely related to practice. In the third year, pre-service teachers individually conduct a limited literature review and an inquiry project in a team, commissioned by a primary school and supervised by a teacher educator. Pre-service teachers can choose their own topic for the final individual inquiry project, which
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