Page 137 - Empowering pre-service teachers through inquiry - Lidewij van Katwijk

5 Scientific contribution
This dissertation contributes to the existing body of knowledge on pre-service teacher research and inquiry. First, the focus on pre-service teacher inquiry in primary teacher education, that is, a bachelor’s degree programme, is unique. Ample research on practitioner research and inquiry in various countries focuses on in-service teachers (e.g., Cochran-Smith & Lytle 2009; Sachs, 2016; So, 2013), teacher educators (e.g., Jacobs et al., 2015; Tack & Vanderlinde, 2014) or pre-service teachers in post-graduate programmes (e.g., Aspfors & Eklund, 2017; Darling-Hammond, 2017; Råde, 2019; Toom et al., 2010). However, few studies focus on teaching pre-service teacher inquiry competences to students in a professional bachelor’s degree programme, such as in our context (e.g. Dunn et al., 2008; Munthe & Rogne, 2015). Our findings confirm to a large extant results in post-graduate and in-service contexts.
Second, although practitioner research and inquiry is assumed to constitute an
important foundation for teachers’ future professional development (e.g. BERA-RSA, 6 2014; Sachs, 2016), the relationship between the quality of pre-service teacher inquiry
and the quality of the teaching practice has not been explored. Previous research
rarely takes the quality of pre-service teacher research assessed by teacher educators
or researchers into account; rather, studies are more typically 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).
In addition, learning outcomes of pre-service teacher research in previous studies are
based on self-reports. As mentioned previously, little empirical research on the impact
of the specific pedagogies of teacher education, including actual learning outcomes
of pre-service teachers, has been conducted (Van Veen, 2013). This dissertation offers
additional scientific value by examining the correlation between the quality of inquiry
and the quality of teaching and identifying four profiles of pre-service teachers using
empirical methods. Third, this dissertation fills a knowledge gap in the perceived
and actual learning outcomes of the introduced pre-service teacher inquiry and in
the alignment of the purpose and value of it in intended, implemented and attained
curriculum.
General conclusion and discussion
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