ENEBLe: Embedding and Nurturing Enquiry-Based Learning - Exploring Multiplicities of Enquiry in Initial Teacher Education

ENEBLe

Project Description

We are a group of teacher educators who model enquiry-based learning (EBL) in our initial teacher education (ITE) courses to model good practice across the science, history and geography curriculum. This approach is received positively by our students who generally use such approaches in their classrooms. This research project is driven by a shared desire not just to model but to also actively incorporate these pedagogies into our own teaching as much as possible, so that students experience enquiry pedagogies at two levels; as modelled for the primary classroom and as an intrinsic component of their learning (two-level model of enquiry learning). While we are each committed to providing student teachers will the skills and understanding to use an enquiry approach in their classrooms, it is important to examine the extent to which we use this approach ourselves, or whether we instead fall back onto traditional methods, citing time and content pressures as reasons for restricting the opportunities to include student voice within the planning and delivery of our programmes.

Funder

SCoTENs €5,180

Dates

2017-2019

Research Team

Dr Sandra Austin, MIE (PI)

Dr Karin Bacon, MIE

Dr Susan Pike, DCU/TCD

Dr Richard Greenwood, Stranmillis UC

Outputs

Greenwood, R., Austin, S., Bacon, K., & Pike, S. (2022). Enquiry-based learning in the primary classroom: student teachers’ perceptions. Education 3-13, 50(3), 404-418.

Pike, S., Austin, S., Greenwood R., & Bacon, K. (2023). Inquiry in teacher education: experiences of lecturers and student teachers, Irish Educational Studies, DOI: 10.1080/03323315.2023.2189139