Page 123 - Empowering pre-service teachers through inquiry - Lidewij van Katwijk

Relationship among quality of inquiry, quality of teaching and perceptions toward inquiry
This study has some limitations. First, all participants were pre-service teachers
from one university of applied sciences who followed the same programme. Therefore, generalisations regarding other programmes should be made with caution. Second,
all data were from recent graduates; pre-service teachers who did not pass one or
both of the assessments on teaching or inquiry might have decided not to complete
the study, and their perceptions were not included in this study. Third, some results
from the questionnaire highlight the need for further research. For example, the
Future scale indicated the expectation of pre-service teachers to conduct practitioner
research or inquiry in their future profession, which might not be a reliable measure
for their actual future behaviour (Fishbein & Ajzen, 2011). Attitudes can vary with the
context in which they are expressed. Therefore, examining the various contexts (e.g.,
different teacher education programmes, background information about the culture 5 of inquiry at schools, internships where pre-service teachers obtain experience with
practitioner research or inquiry) would be worthwhile pursuits for further research.
Previous research has rarely taken the quality of the pre-service teacher inquiry, assessed by teacher educators or researchers, into account; most studies are based on self-reporting methods such as questionnaires and interviews (e.g., Aspfors & Eklund 2017, Kowalczuk-Walędziak et al., 2019; Niemi & Nevgi 2014; Van der Linden et al., 2015). However, a limitation of the present study is that the results are based on single assessment scores of pre-service teaching practice and of the inquiry project. We did not differentiate the quality of various aspects of the assessment of the inquiry project, such as theoretical framework or reflection on professional development teaching assessment; therefore, we cannot indicate which aspects of pre-service teacher inquiry contribute to developing teachers with an inquiry stance. Moreover, longitudinal research into the relation between the quality of pre-service teacher inquiry and ongoing professionalization during the teacher career and improvement of practice would be an interesting next step.
Despite these limitations, our study provides insight into perceptions and actual learning outcomes of pre-service teacher inquiry, which was introduced ten years ago in primary teacher education in the Netherlands. These insights likely are relevant for teacher education programmes with similar settings. Teacher education aims to develop future-proof teachers, such that they are effective in ensuring student achievement and focused on ongoing professional development (Darling- Hammond, 2017). These teachers are able to use and conduct research to evaluate and improve their practice and contribute to a culture of inquiry in their classrooms and school (Baan et al.,2019a; Uiterwijk-Luijk et al., 2019b). The pre-service teachers
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