Developing Inquiry Questions: Encouraging Reflective Practice in a Language and Literacy Methods Course

Abstract

In this article, two university instructors analyze the process two pre-service teachers engaged in while developing an inquiry project in a Language and Literacy course in order to explore the use of practitioner research in pre-service teacher education. Findings indicate that probing questions and constant encouragement to refine questions were necessary to enable pre-service teachers to generate questions for which data could be collected. Pre-service teachers also had to be supported in the process of understanding what kinds of data needed to be collected to answer literacy-related questions and how the data might best be analyzed. These findings have implications for the teaching of reading in that inquiry-based instruction may help pre-service teachers better understand the relationships between theory and practice in the field of literacy.