Page 65 - Empowering pre-service teachers through inquiry - Lidewij van Katwijk

Pre-service teacher inquiry in implemented and attained curriculum
We used both within-case analysis (i.e., within focus groups, within the group
of pre-service teachers, and within the group of teacher educators) and cross-
case analysis (i.e., between those groups) (Miles, Huberman, & Saldana, 2014).
Furthermore, we compared the focus group answers with survey findings related to
the Value and Future scales. Moreover, we asked focus group participants about their
perceptions of the methods used to teach them how to undertake pre-service teacher 3 inquiry projects over the four years of teacher education and how to develop inquiry
habit of mind. Some new codes corresponding to frequently mentioned issues, such
as experienced supervision, emerged from the data, though we did not specifically
ask students about the most important things they had learned from their pre-
service teacher inquiry. Therefore, we compared their reports with related survey
data, according to the Ease and Inquiry competence scales and the open question about
the most important learning opportunity associated with pre-service teacher inquiry.
We checked for differences across focus groups and compared statements between
teacher educators and students (i.e., cross-case analyses).
We tested the reliability of our data in multiple ways: First, to prevent interpretation bias, we recorded the focus group sessions and transcribed the recordings. We sent the transcripts to the focus group teacher educators for member checks and made some requested changes. Second, as authors, we discussed the coding scheme among ourselves and then with a group of teacher educators. To enhance credibility and reach complete agreement, we also involved two independent researchers in the coding discussion to discuss the within-case and cross-case analyses. Third, we used direct quotes from the focus groups in the results section to illustrate and support our findings.
We integrated the quantitative data from the survey and qualitative data from the focus groups for each research question, and compared the answers from pre- service teachers with those of teacher educators.
4 Results
Purpose and value of pre-service teacher inquiry
Table 3.4 displays quantitative results of the survey; it shows that both pre-service teachers and teacher educators regard pre-service teacher inquiry as valuable (M = 4.4 and M = 4.7, respectively, on the 6-point scale). Among pre-service teachers, 85% provide a positive score on the Value scale (M > 3.5), including 22% who even
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