Teacher education programs put emphasis on the inclusion of educational research methods courses in the curriculum for the successful completion of teacher training. There are problems in engaging pre-service teachers in the research process to explore educational issues. To overcome these challenges, the author aimed to conduct an action research study to integrate inquiry-based teaching and learning experiences into an educational research course to assist students in designing applicable research proposals. The instructor prepared different instructional materials for each week to guide students understand the theoretical perspectives in an active process. The design of the course materials followed the backwards design to emphasize the learning outcomes of each week and supported students to prepare a research proposal. Through the qualitative design of the study, instructor journals, student reflections, and samples of students’ written work or assessment artifacts were collected as the data sources and analyzed through inductive analysis to understand the challenges and successes of the instructor and students’ attitudes and experiences: The instructor focused on the preparation of formative and summative assessments in an iterative process by listening to the learners’ perspectives. Evaluation of student achievement was based on completion of weekly materials and final proposal; students’ active involvement in weekly activities contributed to their final grades to develop satisfactory research proposals. Integrating alternative approaches to teacher training is necessary to guide pre-service teachers’ learning in an active process with diverse formative assessment materials. Inquiry-oriented instruction can help pre-service teachers gain competency to deal with problems in practice.

Authors:
Özden Şengül, Bogazici University, Turkey

About the Presenter(s)
Dr. Ozden Sengul is an assistant professor on science education at the Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey.

See this presentation on the full schedule – On Demand Schedule

Bookmark