Page 129 - Empowering pre-service teachers through inquiry - Lidewij van Katwijk

Melbourne, Australia (Chapters 3 and 4). We gained insights into the perceived and actual learning outcomes, as part of the attained curriculum, through questionnaires, focus groups and assessment scores regarding teaching quality and quality of the pre- service teacher inquiry (Chapters 3, 4 and 5).
This final chapter begins with an overview of the main findings and conclusions and then turns to a discussion regarding a selection of these findings and an elaboration of the scientific contribution of this thesis. We continue with the most important limitations and recommendations for future research and end with implications for practice.
2 Main findings
Pre-service teacher inquiry in the curriculum of primary teacher education
The goal of the document analysis of Chapter 2 was to gain insight into the described 6 purpose and value of pre-service teacher research and inquiry in the intended
curriculum, divided into ideal and formal curricula, of primary teacher education in
the Netherlands. Nineteen institutes (>75%) participated by sharing their vision in
policy documents about pre-service teacher research and programme descriptions, including teaching activities and assessment rubrics. The findings show that the main purpose and value of pre-service teacher inquiry is to develop an inquiry stance (in Dutch, onderzoekend vermogen). Through this analysis, we defined an inquiry stance as ’the ability to conduct practitioner research and to use it to improve one’s own professional practice through the integration of research knowledge, research skills, an inquiry habit of mind, and the ability to apply previous findings in practice’. The initial literature review resulted in four pre-service research competences, but the document analysis brought to light six related inquiry competences these institutes required to develop an inquiry stance: (1) research knowledge (e.g., methodology); (2) knowledge about current research in the discipline; (3) research skills, including analysing problems related to practice, undertaking literature reviews, collecting and analysing data and communicating results; (4) ability to apply findings from previous research to practice; (5) an inquiry habit of mind in conducting research (e.g., being curious about and critical toward previous research) and (6) an inquiry habit of mind in practice (e.g., being curious about and alert to pupils’ change in behaviour, wanting to share experiences of own educational practice). Although the last competence is mentioned as one of the goals of pre-service teacher research in 70% of the policy documents, it is hardly
General conclusion and discussion
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