Setting Sail or Missing the Boat: Comparing the Beliefs of Preservice Elementary Teachers With and Without an Inquiry-Based Physics Course

We examined the beliefs about science teaching and learning held by elementary preservice teachers in a science methods course, comparing students who had experienced an inquiry-based physics course with those who had not. Students who had taken the physics course prior to the methods semester were better equipped to recognize and learn from inquiry and better able to apply an inquiry approach to their lesson planning. Students who were concurrently enrolled in the physics course began to revise their incoming beliefs about what it means for students to be active learners in science. The students with no experience in the inquiry-based physics course maintained their limited view that science teaching should be fun, with the teacher as teller and fun-maker.