Elementary Teacher's Beliefs of Scientific Inquiry and Scientific Inquiry Teaching Method

초등학교 교사들의 과학적 탐구 및 지도방법에 관한 신념 연구

This study explored practicing elementary school teacher's beliefs of scientific inquiry and scientific inquiry teaching methods. Defining teacher's beliefs as a broad construct, we tried to examine the teachers' understandings about the scientific inquiry and scientific inquiry teaching method. This study drew on interview data from 10 elementary teachers in busan and changwon area of korea. Conclusions of this study include; First, we found that elementary teacher's beliefs of inquiry were represented variously. And they considered that inquiry is the important goal of science education. They though that the goal of science education is development of Scientific inquiry skills, Scientific thinking skills, development of Creativity and problem solving ability, increasing interest about science, understanding of the basic concepts of science and apply of real-life. second, most of the teachers though that Scientific inquiry is scientists activities, they defined 'the process of creation of new knowledge', 'the process of deriving theory', 'solving process of intellectual curiosity', 'Problem-solving process'. third, they considered that teaching method of scientific inquiry is open inquiry activities. however, they thought that there are many difficulties to actually apply. Understanding teachers' beliefs has implications for both the enactment of inquiry teaching in the classroom as well as the uptake of new teaching behaviors during professional development, with enhanced outcomes for engaging students in Science.