The teacher who develops Inquiry-based Science Teaching: what do the research say?

Abstract

This paper is a literature review on the Inquiry-based Science Teaching (IST), with emphasis on the actions of the Teacher who develops the Inquiry-based Science Teaching (TIST). Considering 58 articles on IST published between 2009 and 2019 in 5 Science Education journals, two types of action were identified: TIST actions directly related to the inquiry-based activities carried out with students (Macrocategory A, most recurrent in the data) and TIST actions related to other teaching activities, in addition to the inquiry-based activities carried out with students (Macrocategory B, less frequent in the corpus). Macrocategory A covers both typical TIST actions and actions that the teacher performs in other didactic approaches. These set of actions seems to characterize the TIST work in the classroom. Macrocategory B refers to actions such as planning and reflection. These actions, less frequent in the data, are essential not only for carrying out inquiry-based activities, but also for thinking about teacher education to develop inquiry-based activities. This work highlights the multiplicity and complexity of TIST actions and points to the importance of other research dimensions for IST, especially those that emphasize TIST as a subject that enables the conditions for the materialization of IST in the classroom.