“The Inquiry-Based Learning” From The View Of Pre-Service Science Teachers

Because science lessons include many abstract concepts, students may be directed to memorize them. This situation may not provide a permanent learning for students. Science education curriculum revised in 2013 in order to train science literate individuals favors inquiry-based learning. By inquiry-based learning, it is aimed to help students gain scientific process skills and learn by doing. A major part of this process consists of teachers who are the practitioners of this process. Therefore, their experiences and attitudes towards inquiry-based learning are crucial for an effective implementation of science teaching. In this context, the aim of this study was to investigate pre-service science teachers’ views related to inquiry-based learning. The study was conducted with 40 third-grade pre-service science teachers from a state university during 2014-2015 fall semester. Inquiry-based experiments within the Science Teaching Laboratory Applications course were designed and carried out with the participants. A scale with open-ended questions was used as data collection tool. The findings from the content analysis indicated that teacher candidates had positive attitudes towards inquiry-based learning process and there were some challenges teachers faced during the implementation process. To overcome these difficulties, teacher candidates suggested some solutions for the application process.