The Investigation Of Teachers' Views On Inquiry Teaching And Its Performance

Curriculum reformation advocates the change of teaching methods, and the inquiry teaching is considered to be an ideal one. However, the investigation through questionnaire illustrates that the traditional lecturing is still at the core of current physics teaching. The recent study of the inquiry teaching mainly focuses on the theory and student level of the teaching, confirming teachers' role in practice but without deep studying of them and with less study of teachers' views. This dissertation, from teachers' perspective, investigates middle school teachers' perceptions of the inquiry-based teaching and its performance in order to provide the theoretical and practical values for its further implementation.The dissertation makes two investigations:I) The investigation of 88 physics teachers in 15 middle schools in Chongqing city. Every teacher is asked to complete a questionnaire concerning teachers' understanding of the background of the curriculum reformation, teachers' attitude to science, and their views of the inquiry teaching and its performance. The results of the investigation are as follows:(1) Physical teachers' understanding of the background of the curriculum reformation and some programmatic documents are poor, especially physical inquiry teaching.(2) Most teachers are not satisfied with the practice of the inquiry teaching. "Interpreting" still takes a great share in teaching, which is, in teachers' words, due tothe present examination system and hardware facilities.(3) Teachers affirm their role in teaching, thinking their knowledge about education and profession, education ideals, and inquiring abilities are helpful in practicing the inquiry teaching, and training and researching of inquiry teaching is also helpful.(4) Factors difficult to control are: the degree of students' autonomous inquiry, the integration of inquiry and physical knowledge, class organization, the length and degree of teachers' involvement. In the various stages of inquiring, "finding and clarifying inquired questions" and "drawing conclusions, and interpreting and constructing physical models" are two stages requiring greatest help.(5) Teachers' evaluation of students is firstly on students' learning interest, self-confidence and their abilities of solving problems, and secondarily on their scores.(6) Teachers' working ages and schools are two important factors impacting their views and practicing.II) Attendance at classes and interviews of six teachers with different working ages and from different schools. The investigation shows:(1) Physical teaching is mainly traditional, or teacher-oriented. Attendance at classes shows: the performance of the inquiry teaching is unparallel on the whole. The key factors are teachers' professional knowledge, their understanding of the teaching and their abilities of practicing as well as other external conditions.(2) Class observation indicates that teachers do not translate their views directly into observable class behaviors. Teachers' actions show little correlation with their experience, but have much relation with their working environment.(3) The interviews show that teachers' understanding of the teaching is superficial and sided. They consider it a new method, which could improve students' hand-on abilities and learning interest, but they do not realize that it is also helpful for the cultivation of students' attitude and spirit of science.(4) The active participation of all subjects in the investigation shows that they all know the importance of the implementation of the inquiry teaching and they long for,more theories and practical experiences. However, their longing is not sufficient to practice it in their classroom.