Department of Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education
Date of this Version
May 2007
Abstract
As university professors we sought to disrupt the practice of giving our students the actions we felt they should imitate in their teaching practice. Instead, we sought to actively engage teachers in the creation of workable solutions to real-life problems. We accomplished this by conducting a participatory action research project. This paper illustrates our action research project focused on preparing middle level science teachers to foster inquiry-based learning in their classrooms. The findings of this study not only lead to a revised professional development opportunity for science teachers, but also provided an example of university faculty engaging in pragmatic research focused on addressing contemporary issues in K-12 science education. The work reported within was partially supported by a National Science Foundation Grant. The opinions, views and conclusions expressed in this paper may not reflect those of the funding agency.
Comments
Published in Journal of Science Teacher Education (2007) 18:377–397. DOI: 10.1007/s10972- 007-9053-8 Copyright © 2007 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. Used by permission. Journal of Science Teacher Education is the official journal of the Association for Science Teacher Education. Published online May 5, 2007.