Exploring Preservice Secondary Science Teachers ’ Abilities of Developing Inquiry Questions in the Content of Earth Science

Abstract: Scientific literacy has long been as one of the key goals of science education, and using scientific inquiry in school science has became an important objective to be achieved. The processes of scientific inquiry consist of proposing/ developing inquiry question, designing and conducting investigation, collecting, analyzing and interpreting data, and communicating the results. However, most students experience mainly collecting and transforming data in inquiry processes in science class and they are barely exposed to the opportunities of proposing/developing inquiry questions. Middle school earth science preservice teachers participated in this study (N=36) and their abilities of developing inquiry questions were surveyed. Participants ’ abilities of developing inquiry questions were investigated whether they were enhanced with activities using the Inquiry Questions Development Guide (IQDG). Also, this study was interested in whether there was any relationship between abilities of developing inquiry questions and designing inquiry investigation. The results of this study were as follows; first, the level and preciseness of inquiry questions and its preciseness developed by participating teachers were enhanced after experiencing IQDG. In addition, teachers ’ dominating inquiry question-types were two: one is a ‘relationship-inquiry question ’ in which students could discover the relationship between results found in the given experimental situations and the other one is a ‘why-how inquiry problem ’ in which students could explore a cause or a process that results in the outcomes. Finally, the higher level of and preciseness the of inquiry questions were identified as an important factor the determined teachers ’ abilities of designing more logical investigation