Investigating grade 10 physical sciences teachers’ beliefs and Attitude about inquiry-based teaching and learning

Abstract: Inquiry has for decades been the prominent and central theme of science curriculum improvement, and inquiry has been used to characterise good science teaching and learning (Anderson, 2002; Anderson, 2007). However science curricula have only recently started to explicitly prescribe inquiry as a pedagogical strategy. In the South African Physical Sciences Curriculum it was only in the 2007 National Curriculum Statement Grade 10–12 Physical Sciences Subject Assessment Guidelines where the use of scientific inquiry was explicitly stated as the major focus of Physical Sciences (Department of Basic Education, 2007). While science reform documents internationally, including the South African Physical Sciences Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement, promote inquiry as a pedagogical strategy that can assist learners to fully understand science, the use of inquiry as a strategy by teachers continues to be a challenge. Emanating from the fact that inquiry as a pedagogical strategy has only recently been explicitly stated in the South African Sciences Curriculum, not much research has been done in South Africa to evaluate teachers’ beliefs and attitudes about inquiry or to evaluate the implementation of inquiry in South African sciences classrooms. There is therefore a need to evaluate and documents factors influencing teachers’ choices of pedagogical strategies and the extent of the implementation of inquiry by teachers in South African science classrooms. This study investigated Grade 10 Physical Sciences teachers’ beliefs and attitude about inquiry-based teaching and learning. The objectives of this study were first to use a validated instrument to describe and measure Grade 10 Physical Sciences teachers’ belief and attitudes about inquiry-based teaching and learning, then to determine the extent to which inquiry is being implemented in their classrooms, and finally to investigate the relationship between these teachers’ beliefs and attitudes about inquiry and their classroom practices. The study used a sequential mixed methods design, where quantitative data was collected first by distributing the questionnaire to all the Grade 10 Physical Sciences teachers within two education circuits Badplaas and Mashishila. This was followed by the collection of qualitative data through the use of classroom observations of three of...M.Ed. (Science Education