The development of an instrument to measure teachers’ inquiry habit of mind

ABSTRACT

In the present study the construct inquiry of mind explored and an instrument to measure it is proposed. Using three different samples, explorative and confirmative factor analyses were performed, resulting in three empirical dimensions that correspond to the three theoretical dimensions: 1) ‘value deep understanding,’ 2) ‘reserve judgment and tolerate ambiguity,’ and 3) ‘taking a range of perspectives and posing increasingly focused questions.’ Our findings suggest the teachers’ inquiry habit of mind scale has good psychometric properties making it useful not only for research that investigates teachers’ research attitude and intention to do research but also as an evaluation tool for the development of an inquiry habit of mind in both student teachers and teacher educators (in teacher education) as well as in experienced teachers (participating in professional development).

KEYWORDS:

• Inquiry habit of mind
• T-IHMS
• teacher professional development
• teacher education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. One item, item 21 ‘I refuse to accept unwarranted assertions and explanations irrespective of how plausible they might be’, appeared in all our pre-analysis to be troublesome. For that reason, we excluded this item in all our analyses reported here. As a result, the raw T-IHMS did not include this troublesome item.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Karel Kreijns

Karel Kreijns is professor of educational sciences at the Welten Institute of the Open University of the Netherlands. His primary research interests are computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL), motivation, open educational resources (OER), open education (e.g., MOOCs) and teachers’ adoption of ICT. Furthermore, he is interested in school leadership and inquiry habit of mind.

Marjan Vermeulen

Marjan Vermeulen is professor of educational sciences with a focus on teacher professionalisation and director of the master Educational science at the Open University in the Netherlands. She is interested in individual and collective learning within the workplace, innovative behaviour of teachers, teams and schools, HRM/HRD, school leadership and organisations.

Arnoud Evers

Arnoud Evers is assistant professor at the Welten Institute, Research Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology at the Open University of the Netherlands. His research areas are: Learning at work; innovative behavior; and (distributed) leadership. He published, among others, in Review of Educational Research and Studies in Continuing Education.

Celeste Meijs

Celeste Meijs is assistant professor educational sciences at the Welten Institute of the Open University in the Netherlands. Her focus was on professional development of teachers by means of networked learning and inquiry habit of mind and she developed instruments for teachers that can be used during their professional development.