Beginning elementary teachers' beliefs about the use of anchoring questions in science: A longitudinal study

Abstract

Current science education reform efforts highlight the importance of engaging students in scientifically oriented questions as a central dimension of inquiry-based elementary science. However, elementary teachers, particularly beginning teachers, must often overcome a variety of challenges to engage their students in reform-minded, standards-based, inquiry-oriented classroom practice. To better support beginning elementary teachers' learning to support students to ask and answer scientifically oriented questions, it is necessary to better understand their beliefs about questions and questioning, as well as how they negotiate these beliefs at this crucial stage of the teacher professional continuum. Four beginning elementary teachers were studied longitudinally over their first 3 years of professional teaching careers. Results show that each teacher cited the importance of driving questions and investigation questions to establish purpose and promote student sense-making. However, they followed different trajectories in reconciling their ideas about the use of driving questions and investigation questions in light of the particular facets of science teaching they prioritized. These findings have important implications for current perspectives on teacher learning along the teacher professional continuum and help inform research on teachers and teaching, as well as teacher education and science curriculum development. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 94: 365–387, 2010