PROFILING IN-SERVICE TEACHERS ACROSS EUROPE TO DETERMINE THEIR ATTITUDE TO IBSE

Abstract

The ESTABLISH FP7-funded project is involved with development and implementation of professional development workshops to support teachers in adopting more inquiry based approaches in their teaching. Identifying teacher views, goals, practices and the challenges they face in implementing inquiry activities, can inform teacher educators of the needs of their participating teachers. This can also inform them to provide the appropriate support in order to help teachers overcome obstacles and develop their own practice in inquiry. This paper outlines the initial results from a profiling instrument used to examine teachers’ beliefs about IBSE, attitudes to teaching science and teaching by inquiry and some ideas about their current practices. The data presented in this paper outlines the profile of the teachers when they came to the first of the ESTABLISH teacher workshops in a number of European countries. This paper outlines a summary of the development of the evaluation tool, how the evaluation data was collected and analysed and highlights the key findings.