Building undergraduate STEM majors’ capacity for delivering inquiry-based mathematics and science lessons: An exploratory evaluation study

• Published in: Studies in educational evaluation 2020-03, Vol.64, p.100833, Article 100833
• Main Authors: Newton, Xiaoxia A., Tonelli, Edward P.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Inquiry pedagogy; Secondary mathematics and science content; STEM majors; Teacher preparation
• ISSN: 0191-491X; 1879-2529
• DOI: 10.1016/j.stueduc.2019.100833

•We cannot take for granted STEM majors know the basic inquiry concepts.•Teaching the elements of inquiry to STEM majors is important and beneficial.•Offering opportunities to connect inquiry and secondary content is important. Recruiting and preparing STEM majors for teaching has become one of the major efforts at improving mathematics and science teacher quality at secondary level. One question is whether STEM majors who have not had the chance to experience active learning in mathematics and science classes as secondary students themselves know what inquiry pedagogy is. Secondly, it is unclear whether those who experienced inquiry in their college introductory discipline courses will be able to utilize the pedagogy in teaching secondary content. We address these questions through studying an undergraduate research methods course designed to improve STEM majors’ capacity for delivering inquiry-based mathematics and science lesson. Analysis of data from pre-and-post course surveys and students’ written research reports including students’ reflection on their inquiry projects suggests that offering future STEM teachers opportunities to conduct inquiry and reflect explicitly on how inquiry can be used to teach secondary content is important and beneficial.