Page 54 - Empowering pre-service teachers through inquiry - Lidewij van Katwijk

Chapter 3
Abstract
This study aims to gain insight into the perceived purpose and value of pre-service teacher inquiry in Dutch primary teacher education at the undergraduate level; it also assesses the implementation of teaching and learning activities and learning outcomes associated with teacher inquiry. In the Netherlands, inquiry competence in primary teacher education develops over a four-year period, resulting in students’ completion of capstone projects, using practitioner inquiry. The authors combine a survey with focus groups of teacher educators and pre-service teachers from eight institutes. They find differences between pre-service teachers’ perceptions of the implementation of inquiry competence and teacher educators’ visions and perceptions of such implementation. All participants, students and educators, believe inquiry to be valuable and perceive learning outcomes of inquiry to be enriching, yet about half of the pre-service teachers do not to expect to undertake inquiry in their future teaching jobs.
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