“Just Tell Me What to Do”: Teacher Candidates’ Struggles With Learning to Teach Using Inquiry

• In Event: Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: Relationships Between Preservice Teacher Preparation and Practice

Abstract

This paper examines the challenges teacher candidates in two universities in Texas face as they attempt to learn to teach using inquiry in two undergraduate social studies methods courses. Although inquiry is increasingly advocated as a method for developing students’ learning, helping teacher candidates learn to teach using inquiry presents teacher educators with significant challenges that have not been fully explored in the teacher education literature. Grounded in the narrative inquiry tradition, the authors use a variety of qualitative research methods to elicit students’ struggles with inquiry and examine that data for how they might inform teacher educators’ efforts to teach inquiry.

Authors

• Jacob William Neumann, The University of Texas - Pan American

• Bernardo E. Pohl, University of Houston-Downtown